State of Play: Napoléon 1807 – the Battle of Eylau

  

 

Left to his own devices, T would happily continue trying to win as the Germans playing WWII Commander: Battle of the Bulge (Compass Games, 2020) for another five or six weeks, but I’m falling behind on my review schedule, so he agreed to only slightly grudgingly agreed to a game of Napoléon 1807 (Shakos, 2020).

Set-up at start of the game.

Napoléon 1807 uses the same mechanics as Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2017), which I reviewed at the beginning of the year and have written about extensively elsewhere. It plays similarly as well, offering the same constraints and challenges as it’s predecessor, but overall, the game has increased in magnitude. The gameboard now covers a 22” by 36” board, instead of the 24” square of its predecessor, and while 1806 offered just two scenarios, the full seven-turn game and a three-turn introductory scenario, 1807 brings a total of thirteen scenarios, including one that allows you to combine Napoleon 1806 with 1807 for a continuous game. For our first outing with this game, we chose a shorter scenario, the Battle of Eylau (historical placement – four turns), to get to know the system again.

In most respects, Napoléon 1807 plays like its predecessor. Movement and combat work just as in the first game; both are driven by a multi-use card deck, along with all the game’s other functions. The differences come with the larger map, the addition of Winter Quarters cards, which I’ll come back to, and two new markers; x-shaped garrison markers in each side’s colour, and yellow blast-shaped markers, used to indicate that a garrison is under siege at the opposing side at the start of the game. The Conquerors series uses a pendulum system for Victory Points, and if the siege marker remains on the board at the end of the game, this will shift the VP marker two points in the direction of the besieging force.

Beginning of Turn 2. The map by artist Nicolas Triel has some really lovely detail.

Another change to the original game is the scope of victory. Where the earlier game had a clear definition of French victory, with anything else being a default win for the Prussian player, the scoring in Napoleon 1807 is a little more nuanced, with the possibility of a draw if neither side makes a significant enough gain.

As is his want, T played the French, while I took on the role of the Russians. The scenario starts with the Russian formations concentrated at Heilsberg, with the French split over the south and west (the left short edge of the board is north). The VP track runs from 0 (automatic French victory if this is reached) to 20 (auto Russian victory). In the Battle for Eylau, the VP marker starts the game at 8 points, the bottom threshold for a Russian win – 5 o 7 points will result in a tie. With only four turns and so much ground to cover, the Russians have to break the sieges in Danzig and Graudenz, protect their own holdings, and take a French-held town or two to hold on to a victory. The French need to make a decision early, either to move quickly to nab Osterode and Konigsberg, and defend their own garrisons, while maintaining the Danzig and Graudenz sieges, or to try to hammer the Russian formations and hope to inflict enough damage to shift the VP marker their way. The French have the edge in combat, but four turns is not a lot of time to pursue either course.

As the game opens, each player draws three cards to have in their hand. If one of these has a red banner at the top (Rain, Snow, or Cold) this enters play for the turn, affecting both side’s formations. Remarkably, a Rain card only appeared in the third turn.

After the players have examined their hands, each draws their next card off their deck. This is their Initiative bid; whoever has the higher value card (in action points) takes the first action, then the players take turns ordering – or trying to order – their units to move or engage the enemy, or both, until both sides “pass.”

New innovations: Garrison and Siege markers, and the Winter Quarters card.

As it happened, both of us played a sub-par opening. I drew the initiative, and I should have ordered Essen I, well to the south, and a stone’s throw from French-held Warsaw, but instead I began breaking up the bulk of my army into smaller groups, trying to manoeuvre to screen my citadels and garrisons. The Conquerors game series rules reward bold action and audacious plays. I forgot this and went into a defensive mode from the get-go. By the time I’d woken up to that particular opportunity, Sarvey had already blocked my hereto clear path to Warsaw.

T wanted to bring a hammer blow, so he kept his grouped formations together, trying to bring them into action in twos and threes. Unfortunately, this makes them unwieldy; to move a unit or group of units, the player declared the ordered unit(s) – we simply point to them – then draw a card. The number od action points the card offers dictates how far a single unit can move. But if you’ve declared for a group of units to move, each on above the first will cost an extra point (this is to reflect the logistical difficulties in trying to manoeuvre multiple corps in unison). If you nominate a three-formation army for movement and draw a card with a value of 4 points, you’ve already lost two points with the two extra units; the army will only be able to move two spaces. Without the luxury of many turns, the safer route would be to break up the larger units for movement, then try to reunite them, or some of them, at the final destination.

Third turn rain, and the siege of Danzig lifted (lower left corner).

The French player begins the game with an extra penalty as well. Bernadotte begins the game with a one-block reduction in his strength, with that block on the French Winter Quarters card. When Winter Quarters are in effect, the first strength losses for each side are placed on their own Winter Quarters card. When the fifth block is placed, the Winter Quarters card is placed in the player’s discards, and when next drawn, the card is set aside near the board. When both cards have been drawn, the game comes to an end, regardless of the remaining turns. Probably not something to worry about in a game this short, but one more layer of uncertainty in a game with a lot of uncertainty already baked in.

Turns one and two saw some altercations between individual corps, but nothing decisive. L’Estourq outmanoeuvred Ney to liberate Elbing, only to see it recaptured by Ney in pursuit and L’Estourq ventured west to lift the siege of Danzig. Murat broke for Konigsberg and by turn four the city was in French control (had it not been for the Rain card in effect in turn three, the garrison would have fallen a turn earlier). All-in-all, it was a fumbling effort on both sides, with the French denying a Russian victory, but not delivering a decisive-enough blow to secure victory. The end score was 7 – a tie.

Defeat is the best teacher. Next time, we’re going to try one of the longer-duration scenarios, and we’ll see who has taken their lessons to heart.

Bottom of the fourth. French one point short of a marginal victory.

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

  

Note: This is the third part of my indulgent – and questionable in value – analysis of my wargame collection. In Part I, I broke the collection down by publisher (spoiler alert, GMT was the clear winner, but Compass. Worthington and dark horse Legion Wargames are making headway), and historical period (based on the 2022 Charles S. Roberts Awards divisions, which I take issue with, but we work with what we have). In Part II, I broke it down into One-off games, Series rules, and Expansions (items dependent on another complete base-game).

In this final part, I’ll look at the collection through the lens of Mode (introduced as categories in the 2023 Charlies), and, perhaps most tellingly, player count. I was a little surprised by the first, though I shouldn’t have been when I thought about it. The second confirmed what I had suspected.

 

I’m not partial to the term “mode” for use in defining the general scale of a game, in reference to whether a game I broadly tactical, operational or strategic, or residing in a grey area somewhere between. But “scale” is inappropriate too because you can’t assume a divisional level game plays out operationally simply because of the scale of the formations involved. Gradation would not work for the same reason while hierarchy wrongly hints that each level up is somehow more important or more serious. I’m beginning to see why the Charles S. Roberts Awards selection committee went with Mode. But I am glad they introduced this tier of awards. Hmm. Maybe “Tier” would work? Let me get back to you on that.

My favourite mode of game of play would be Operational, but I don’t seem to get the chance all that often. There are Strategic games I really enjoy (I’d put more abstract strategy games into his group as well), and I’m trying to expand my experience in this area as well. I play Tactical games quite a lot, but I wouldn’t have said they were my go-to.

Armageddon War, a really clever and engaging game, and back with a second printing.

Imagine my surprise when I added up the break-down figures and saw that Tactical games make up a whopping 58% of my collection by title. To be fair, this count includes all the supplementary titles for base tactical games like Panzer (GMT Games, 2012) and Combat Commander: Europe (GMT Games, 2006). While much of the Commands and Colors family may strictly be Grand Tactical, the system still plays like a purely tactical game (something the games share with their spiritual antecedent, miniatures wargaming). Still, I wouldn’t have thought that it would come to as much as it does. Then I started thinking about what made up that list.

When I think of tactical games (Besides C&C), I think of WWII games. I sold my original Squad Leader sets on a couple of years ago to a local fellow who will put them to better use than I could, but I still have a couple of volumes of Old School Tactical (and their attendant expansions – Flying Pig Games), three stand-alone volumes of Band of Brothers (Worthington), nearly the full kit of Combat Commander: Europe (I passed on the tournament scenarios), three boxes of Conflict of Heroes (Academy Games), and four stand-alone Undaunted (Osprey Games) titles, as well as Panzer (GMT Games, 2012) and its first four expansions, and Tank Duel (GMT Games, 2019), along with the North Africa expansion (GMT, 2021).

Beyond these, I also have MBT (GMT, 2016) and its three expansions, Great War Commander (Hexasim, 2018) Armageddon War (Flying Pig Games, 2018), ’65: Squad-Level Combat in the Jungles of Vietnam (Flying Pig, 2016), Assault (GDW, 1983), and Platoon Commander Deluxe: The Battle of Kursk (Flying Pig, 2018), which really belongs with the other WWII tactical games, but I only just remembered it.

Like I said, by preference, I’d play an operational game, but there’s a reason this blog has its name; the majority of my gaming opportunities tend to  a couple of hours snatched out of a week-night, As a rule, operational games don’t especially lend themselves to a 150 minute slot, and we simply don’t have the luxury of space to leave a game set up for a week or two at a time. Tactical games, on the other hand, lend themselves brilliantly to shorter play times.

For all my stated preference, Operational games make up a mere 30% of my collection, but among these are some of the most curious and engaging games in the collection. Won by the Sword (GMT Games, 2014) is an interesting game, combining the operational and logistical aspects of the conflict (allowing the player to use excessive-foraging as a defensive weapon) with set-piece tactical battles played out on a separate battle board, but the game wasn’t without its critics. It was meant to be the first in a series covering, I believe, the entirety of the 30 Years’ War, but only the first volume was ever published. I’ve only played it two-handed, and not for a while, but I remember having fun with it. I’m interested in the period, and while it gets some love from game designers (there is a new game coming out from Compass, No Peace for Thirty Years, which is slated for release in 2024 or early ‘25), it’s no American Civil War.

Activation chits from Brothers at War, 1862 (Compass Games, 2022), another
astonishingly good tactical game, but entirely unrelated to the Second World War.

Another interesting approach to operations is Tonkin: The First Indochina War(Second Edition) (Legion Wargames, 2012), with its supply dumps that are located on the board like units and can be spent (exhausted) for a major offensive operation but can also be overrun and destroyed by the enemy. This is a tricky and immersive game that deserves more of a spotlight. I’ll try to put a review together sometime soon.

I have a couple of games from the Levy and Campaign series. The system that started with Volko Ruhnke’s Nevsky: Teutons and Rus in Collision 1240-1242 (GMT Games, 2019), replicates the difficulties faced by medieval warlords in conducting operations any sort of distance from their power base, and raised the matter of supply to practically its own character in the unfolding drama. You really have to ensure your lords will come to the party when you seek to act, and you need to be sure you can feed all those soldiers on your campaign, for the whole campaign, and if you’re successful, you’d better hope there’s enough plunder to go around to get everyone to stay at the party a little longer, or you can find yourself abandoned and deep in enemy territory.

Napoléon 1807 (Shakos, 2020). Strictly operational in scope, but feels tactical. 

Then there are all those Mark Simonitch 19XX games. Operational games, in short, generally offer a satisfying level of crunchiness beyond simple manoeuvre and combat without slipping into the issues of production and manpower. Realistically, though, I get far fewer opportunities to get operational games to the table, unless I’m playing solo. Extra participant availability is low at this point in my life. I maintain the hope that as we all get closer to retirement age, more opportunities to play longer games will open up.

Strategic level games tend to be similar to operational level games in terms of the time-commitment required, but not always. Some games like Medieval (HGN Games, 2018), Hitler’s Reich (GMT Games, 2018), Lincoln (Worthington Publishing/PSC, 2018) and it’s spiritual descendent, Struggle for Europe 1939-1945 (Worthington Publishing, 2019), can play out inside of a couple of hours. These are fun games and good options to have available for a week-night game. Deeper strategic-level games like The U.S. Civil War (GMT Games, 2015), require a much deeper commitment in time and table space. These days I’m much more willing to buy a game if it has shorter scenario options.

Medieval (the 2018 re-release of the classic card game). Reputedly, this was
Richard Berg's favourite of his own designs to play.

I added a fourth category to this list. Abstract wargames are (by my definition) games that are strongly themed to a particular conflict, but are resolved in less direct ways than what would, typically constitute a wargame (again, my list – my rules). I only have three games that I would place in this category, but they all warrant a mention. Agamemnon (Osprey Games, 2016) is a combination of worker placement mechanics and a fever dream of Achilles. It requires you to build paths for your troops to help them circumvent the paths of your opponent’s men, and the paths are akin to the threads spun and sheared by the Fates; everyone dies in the end, but those with the longest threads receive the most glory. Personally, I couldn’t think of a truer metaphor for ancient combat.

Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! (PSC, 2022) lives up to its name. It is a challenging game where you take turns placing markers in an effort to surround the provinces of the Roman Empire and take control of them, while frustrating the efforts of your opponent. You can find an unboxing article here, and a review of the game here.

Lastly, The Barracks Emperors (GMT Games, 2023), is a trick-taking game where the players aim to secure as many emperors as possible before Rome falls to the invading Barbarian hordes. The game plays fluidly, and is probably best with four players, but will accommodate two very well. The production is outstanding and, as game-y as it obviously is, it does feel like a contest between factions trying to out-orate each other while the world burns around them. A game for our times. (You can find an unboxing post for The Barracks Emperors here).

 

And so, to player-count. The biggest segment of my collection is comprised of strictly two-player games, 69% all told. There are several reasons for this, and not all of them are about me. From their beginnings, games of skill (as opposed to games of chance, like card games or casting lots) have nearly always been two player pursuits. Senet, chess, hnefatafl, backgammon and draughts (checkers) are all two-player games. The kinds of subjects covered – until quite recently – by wargames have tended to be two-sided interactions, regardless of theme; Alexander and whomever he was conquering that week, Napoleon and the rest of greater Europe, the Axis and the Allies, the Jets and the Sharks. With that in mind, it shouldn’t be too surprising that more than two thirds of my wargame collection is made up of two-player games.

I also have a personal preference for two-player games. There is the simple math of one opponent means less down-time between turns – unless your rival is given to fits of analysis paralysis, you should have enough time while they are taking their turn to appraise the situation and decide on your next steps and be ready to execute your turn with the same brevity. I also like matching wits with someone who is roughly my equal in skill and experience or better/more experienced (metal sharpens metal), without the distraction of other players. Sometimes – this happens a lot in miniatures games – I find myself having to carry a partner to a degree, because they aren’t as experienced or invested in the game.

The majority of games with dedicated solo rules (e.g., Chancellorsville,1963 (Worthington Games, 2020)) or some kind of baked-in solo option (Pacific Tide: The United States Versus Japan, 1941-45 (Compass Games, 2019)) are essentially two player games as well, though some of these have been introduced supplementary to existing games, like Panzer Exp. 4: France 1940 (GMT Games, 2019) or Undaunted:Reinforcements (Osprey Games, 2021). These make up 13% of the count, so roughly 9% could be added to the two-player games, and the remaining 5% to multiplayer games.

The multiplayer games I do own share one common quality. None are knock-out games. Games that whittle down the number of layers at the board like some kind of ludological battle-royale are anathema to me. I’d I have to play with four or five at the table, then I want everyone to feel like they can at least make a contribution to the outcome or vie for a ranking rather than be denied a place early on and have to amuse themselves while the remaining players duke it out. I put it down to an early experience with Monopoly (Parker Brothers, 1935), which nearly put me off boardgames for good. I think the best multiplayer games offer multiple avenues to victory and limit the opportunities to curtail your opponents through direct action. My favourites are probably Dominion (Rio Grande Games, 2008), Orléans (dlp games, 2014), Win, Place and Show (Avalon Hill, 1977) and Rail Baron (Avalon Hill, 1977), none of which made it to the wargame list (for obvious reasons), but are nonetheless a lot of fun, and all scalable from two to five or six players without becoming too unruly. As for wargames, Time of Crisis (GMT Games, 2017) and the Great Statesmen series from GMT (starting with Churchill (GMT Games, 2015)) fit the bill admirably.

Rail Baron. More fun than it looks.

I’ve played two-player games double-handed for years, and not only to teach myself how to play them, but I only really came around to dedicated solitaire games quite recently. My earliest experiences were (surprise, surprise) two Worthington games, 1759: Siege of Quebec (Worthington Publishing, 2022 – my review can be found here) and Tarawa, 1943 (Worthington Publishing, 2021). The analysis tells me I currently have nineteen dedicated solitaire games (around 9% of games owned) and I really enjoy all of them. I still didn’t think of myself as a solitaire game player until my back-to-back purchases of two Legion releases, Skyhawk: Rolling Thunder, 1966 (Legion Wargames, 2022) and Aces of Valor (Legion Wargames, 2022). These days I’m much more open to pulling out a game purely for my own enjoyment, instead of just learning a new game t teach to others.

Since COVID, a lot of game companies have doubled-down on providing specially prepared solo rules for their multiplayer games. GMT now has a whole team on the job, GMT-One, ensuring that most of their games have some kind of dedicated solo-gaming option, and the weaponisation of Stuka Joe’s CDG solo system has opened up a swarth of games to alone-time play. Okay, that sounded better in my head.

 

Redvers' Reverse: the Battle of Colenso, 1899 (Legion Wargames, 2016). 

Conclusions

I haven’t always made smart decisions in my wargame collection development. When I was a struggling university student living pretty much hand-to-mouth, I nonetheless chose to, over the course of about a year, buy a brand-new, still in shrink, set of Squad Leader (Avalon Hill, 1977) and its three boxed expansions (at an overall cost of about a month’ rent). I think I did this to connect myself to my gaming past (this was my second set, the first set thankfully left in the care of a friend before I left town, so it didn’t get thrown out with all my other game stuff). I didn’t know anyone at that stage who played wargames, let alone Squad Leader – ASL had been out for nearly ten years by then. A few years ago, I sold those four boxes, three of them unpunched, to a guy rebuilding his own collection from his youth.

These days, I have to be much more circumspect about what I buy, due mostly to the space restrictions of living in a smallish apartment. I haven’t quite got the point of having to instigate a one-in/one-out policy, but I can see that day coming. There are a few bits and pieces that I would be happy to part with, but most of the games I was indifferent about have already gone to eBay or to friends and family.

Now I try to buy things I know I will be able to get to the table. Two maps are about my comfortable limit; I can set up and play The Russian Campaign, Fifth Edition (GMT Games, 2023), but not The Korean War: June 1950 – May 1951 (Compass Games, 2021). Longer duration games I can play over consecutive nights by setting it up on a sheet of board and carefully transfer it from the table to the floor in the next room when we need the dinner table for, well, dinner. I have a very understanding and indulgent wife.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I feel quite fortunate for having two regular game nights a week, one (most weeks) with my brother-in-law, and one with the Wednesday night crew. One-on-one games with T, I realise now, have almost always been tactical games, and that has had a much bigger impact on my collection development than I had ever realised. Wednesday nights are divided roughly equally between wargaming and roleplaying games, with a sprinkling of ameritrash thrown in for leavening. There has been a subtle influence there as well; I think I’ve felt beholden to bring some games to the table that will accommodate four or five players to bring something to the table for the group’s edification. I probably would have still bought Plains Indian Wars (GMT Games, 2022) and The Barracks Emperors for myself (it helps both have rules or guidelines for solo play), but I may not have gone as far as Border Reivers (GMT Games, 2023), which, to be honest, I haven’t got around to punching and reading though yet.

Rebel Fury (GMT Games, 2024). Expect to see more of this here in coming months.

I have been putting more consideration into what I choose to bring into the fold, which is another way of saying I’m being more cautious over what I spend my money on, or what I’m willing to give space on my shelf to. They are all factors. I haven’t articulated a collection development policy yet, but if I had, I think I’d find it hard to stick to diligently. There will always be games that I just want to own, with some vague plan of getting it to the table in the nebulous future (Downfall: Conquest of the Third Reich, 1942-1945 (GMT Games, 2023) springs to mind; the game looks amazing, but I haven't even bothered looking at the rules yet because I can't envisage a time in the next eighteen months when I might be able to get it to the table), but now I recognise when I’m doing it, and I’m okay with that. These are my aspirational purchases, and they come from a place of hope. 

But around two years ago, I realised I’d only played about one in five of the games I owned. There’s nothing wrong with being a collector, but it was something I’d slipped into without noticing.  That was when I first started to think about kinds of games I wanted to play, and started focusing on acquiring games that I would make the time and opportunities to play. I used to have a nagging guilt about buying new games when I hadn’t played so many that I already owned, and it’s still there a little, but the percentage-played metric is slowly rising, despite the new titles entering the collection. Generally I’m buying a little less, laying a lot more, and I get to write about it in the blog, which is its own singular pleasure.

 

 

Stripped Down for Parts: The Lamps Are Going Out: World War I

   

  

World War I, or the Great War (or The War to End All Wars), as it was referred to at the time, holds an abiding fascination for me as a subject for exploration through gaming. Obviously I’m not the only one, because there are an awful lot of WWI games on the market these days, and many of them have developed committed followings. It’s such an expansive subject that I think there is room in anyone’s collection for more than one.

I nabbed a copy of The Lamps Are Going Out: World War I (Compass Games, 2016) from my FLGS on the recommendation of Karl from the Wargaming Bootcamp; I’d mentioned in a comment on somebody else’s post on Facebook that Dawn’s Early Light: the War of 1812 (Compass Games, 2020), was currently my favourite CDG, and Karl responded with a couple of others he held in equal esteem, but first and foremost was The Lamps Ae Going Out. I’ve never been one to let a provocation like that slide, so I felt I had to investigate this for myself. When I’ve spent some more time with the game, I’ll post a review, but in the meantime, here’s a look at what comes in the box.

But first, the box, with its rather poignant photograph adorning the cover. Two weeks after the death of King Edward VII of Britain and Ireland, the nine monarchs of Europe gathered to pay their respects and to participate in the extraordinary spectacle of Edward’s funeral. As they sat for this photo, none of them could have conceived of the tumult that would descend upon Europe a mere four years later.

The box back gives us a look at some sample troop, event and technology counters and a sample event card and technology card, (all reproduced at roughly their actual size), all against a backdrop of a portion of the board, showing Italy, Greece and the western Balkans.

The standard provisos let us know that the game is of medium difficulty (while not a scale, the folks at Compass games are pretty reliable with a statement like this), it plays one to four players but is best with two, has a high solitaire suitability (I’ll be testing that claim the first time or two to the table), and the game should run to about five hours. The map is referred to as “Strategic,” which might be code for area movement; I’d say it’s kind of a front-scale area map, as the larger countries are divided up into roughly along the lines of historical frontlines. The unit scale is individual armies – the units are identified by the designations of the armies that participated in the war – and the turn scale is approximately three months, which is likely the ideal durational scale for a game of this scope.

Rule Book (in case the cover didn't give it away).

The second edition of the game comes with two booklets. The Rulebook and a separate booklet of additional designer’s notes for the second edition publication and more thorough explanations of each of the event cards.  rulebook is Thiry-six pages. High sheen pages with gloss cover. The rules run to twenty-three pages. The booklet also contains a Table of Contents, the Designer’s Notes from the first edition, and an eight-page Extended Example of Play.

Sample page from the rule book.

The additional Design Notes booklet is new to the second edition of the game. It runs to twenty pages, with the first three devoted to additional design notes. The other seventeen pages are given to detailed notes on the function of each Event card and a paragraph or two (some are quite extensive) on its historical background or significance. This all makes for really interesting reading. This isn’t a review, or even a cursory exploration of the game, so I don’t want to go too deep into the tall grass, but I will say the first edition nots in the rulebook and the follow-up notes and event descriptions are well worth the time spent reading through them.

Second Edition Design Notes, incorporating the expanded Event Card notes
and historical details. Interesting reading for its own sake.

The map for Lamps is mounted on a solid-weight board and lays out nicely out of the box (you might have to put a couple of books of other games on top of the rising folds for twenty minutes or so if you have the luxury of that much time – I’d do it while you’re punching and sorting the counters if you want to start pushing pieces around straight away). The play area offers most of Europe (minus the Iberian Peninsula) and a goodly portion of the Levant and the Syrian plains, presented in sombre tones. The East African interests and the distant United States are represented with box-inserts.

The map. Mostly playable. All useful.

The colours used for various countries distinguish the antagonists home territories, as well as individual smaller states like Greece and Bulgaria. Two neutral countries – the Netherlands and Switzerland – are rendered in black, impassable to both sides. There’s a slight colour variation in the Triple Entente with France and the UK appearing in khaki, while Italy takes a more mustard hue, Germany is rendered in light grey, Austria-Hungary and Turkey in a rain-bearing blue/grey, and Russia in a mossy green. The effect is quite striking.

As I mentioned earlier, the larger countries are divided into a series of areas to be contested. Some areas have representations of mountains, which will impact on units’ defensive combat and movement. A terrain key nis incorporated into the map, along with a turn track and an escalating America Declares War track. The whole thing looks both appealing and very playable, although I suspect the action around Verdun, Venetia/Austria and Gallipoli might get a little crowded, looking at the numbers of counters at play in the Extended Example of Play.

All in all, the map is eminently functional and fit for purpose. To my mind, wargame artists don’t usually get the recognition they deserve. A game’s artwork will often subtly affect the way a player approaches the game. We’ve all had the experience of a map’s colour scheme or poor contrast between the background and values on a counter reduce the joy of the play experience. So, I wanted to take a moment here to mention Tim Allen was the artist on The Lamps Are Going Out (and another Compass game covering the same theatre, Imperial Tide: The Great War,1914-1918 (Compass Games, 2022). Mr Allen has well over a hundred games to his credit on BGG, including some personal favourites. When I get to writing a review of the game I’ll probably forget to mention Mr Allen’s contribution, so I wanted to take the opportunity here.

Players Aid Cards, Triple Entente and Russia/USA (top),
and Germany and Central Allies (bottom).

The game comes with four Player’s Aid Cards (PACs), two each for the Triple Entente (TE) and the Central Powers (CP). The pairs are duplicates, with the additional copies for the four-player game option. The need for this will become clear in a moment.

The reverse side of the PACs all feature the game set-up guidelines form page 26 of the rulebook. This is really handy as if you’re playing someone who is already somewhat familiar with the game, you can effectively halve the set-up time, which – looking at the set-up notes – shouldn’t be too burdensome a task in itself (compared to some other games, at least).

Set-up notes (on the reverse side of all four PACs).

The play-side of the PAC is where it gets interesting. It’s intended to be used as a mat for managing your off-board counters. This is no doubt because, apart from the US involvement and Turn tracks, the whole map-board is taken up with, well, map. Given the reverse is only of use before the game, it doesn’t create any imposition, except for the need for a little more table space.

Everything is laid out very sensibly and usefully on the PAC, though. There are slight variations between the CP and TE PACs as necessary. Each has a Sequence of Play on the left side, but the Central Powers SoP features two extra steps in their Movement Please for U-Boats and Fleets, and the TE card sports a U-Boat Attack Table where the CP card has a U-Boat Attrition Table. Similarly, the other charts correspond across the two PACs, with the content tailored for that side. The PACs also duplicate the holding boxes for Eliminated units, Event Markers, etc., for the two factions making up each side so the players each only need a single PAC out for a two-player game.

Counter sheets (pre-rounded - sheer luxury) This is a relatively
low counter-density game, for the scope..

The two counter-sheets for Lamps are the pre-rounded easy-punch types that people either love or hate. Personally, I don’t mind them. These 5/8” counters are printed in a matt finish on a grey-core board of a good thickness (about 2mm). They’re easy to pick up and move around, which, at the end of the day, is what you’re looking for in game counters.

The choice of colours for the nationalities matches those used on the board. There are no numeric values for strength or movement on the unit counters, but at this scale there needn’t be. Each unit features aits national flag, the army’s designation, and a figure of a soldier in the uniform of that force. The result is very effective. Units have two states, Ready (front) and spent (reverse). Other on-map counters include entrenchment and artillery concentration, Air Superiority, Fleets, U-boats and Zeppelins (German), and Convoys (Entente) markers. The counter mix incudes various Some of the Event cards for both sides have corresponding Event markers which will be placed either on the board of the card as a reminder that the event in question is currently in play.

The cards some in two decks, but they need a little sorting,

The game comes with two sealed card decks in loose-fitting cellophane baggies that I think should become an industry standard. I get the shrink-wrapped plastic is to stop the cards rubbing against each other  and give them a little more integrity (safety in numbers) if they get jolted around in transit, but you essentially get the same thing from these bags, the sturdiness of the plastic offering something off a buffer for knocks, and I’m not terrified of slipping and putting a gouge in some of the cards trying to get a knife under the seam of the wrap to split it open. Just my opinion. The cards themselves are printed on a good card-stock and shuffle well. These too are really nicely illustrated with images appropriate martial images from the period.

Some sample cards; two Events on each side, and a Technological Advance in
the Middle (note the "A2" in the top left-hand corner - you can't activate
this card unless the "A1" card is already in play).

There are actually six sets of cards; four Event decks – each faction has their own to draw from – and two Technology decks, which only Germany and the Western Alliance (the two research powerhouses) get to draw from. The Event decks reflect historical events and significant personalities involved in the conflict. Some Event cards offer an advantage for their faction when played, while others will cause a minor setback (though even a minor probable can become significant at the wrong moment; such are the fortunes of war). The technology cards offer advantages of their own, but only if the requirements for the drawn cards have already been met; both sides, for example, may be able to develop their air superiority (cards P1 through P3), but a drawn P3 card drawn by either faction in their Technology Draw phase can only be put to use if their P1 and P2 cards are already in play. If not, it gets shuffled back into the deck; no technology advance this turn.

Serious dice, but no baggies. : (

I neglected to mention the quality of the box before. In recent years every Compass game I’ve bought has come in a good, quality box with a lid that will come off easily enough when you want it to (I’m sure everyone develops their own removal techniques). The box for Lamps is no exception.

The game comes with four white six-sider pip dice which look familiar from other Compass games, so I have no doubt they will roll well (except for the times when my own well-documented poor luck at pivotal moments intercedes). I was a little surprised when I discovered an absence of the expected baggie-roll from among the contents of the box. I’m not too heartbroken – I can source my own counter bags or spring for a tray – but Compass usually includes really good quality bags. A small thing.

There is a note included in the box, identifying a single erratum; to wit, that any references to the British Isles as being Factory 5 are incorrect, and should be read as Factory 4. The 4 appears on the map, next to the Factory symbol, so that should be a sufficient reminder, but some people have a big stick out for Compass regarding errata, so you can’t blame them for wanting to cover their bases.

Well, that’s everything that comes with The Lamps Are Going Out, Second Edition. Overall, the game components all look good and are of a high grade, but I’ve been spoilt a bit by the Compass games I’ve acquired thus far, so it doesn’t come as a surprise. I’m looking forward to putting The Lamps Are Going Out through its paces, but I’ll want to play it a least a couple of times with another human before I review it, so it might not come for a couple of months. In the meantime, I’ll solo it a couple of times to find my way around, and if all goes well, I might put up a session report as an appetiser.

 

  

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

 

 

Note: This is the second part of my journey down the rabbit hole of collection analysis. Here is where we look at the working end of my games, and gain some understanding of the factors influencing my selection process. Part I, where I classified my games by publisher – which I had done once before, though the collectin has groen some since then – and by historical period setting, using the (arguably inadequate) Charles S. Roberts Awards categories from the 2022 awards. In this post, I’m breaking my collection down into the types of items that make it up..

 To get a better idea of my own collecting habits, I took a broad-brushstroke view of what constituted my game collection. I broke the list down into three categories:

 - Stand-alone games. These are one-off titles intended to stand on their own. Most are like Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Battle (Companion WarGames, 2019), or Prairie Aflame! The Northwest Rebellion, 1885 (Legion Wargames, 2020). Sometimes a stand-alone game will have its own expansion, as in the case of Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD (GMT Games, 2017) and its “extras” package, The Age of Iron and Rust (GMT Games, 2019), which introduced some additional cards and non-player AI options. The expansion doesn’t radically change the play of the game or refashion it into another situation, so I’d still class it as a stand-alone game. The expansions o one-off games are still counted among the Expansions.

RAF: Battle of Britain. Definitely a stand-alone game, and really quite brilliant.

 - Series Games. These tend to be games that share a common rules-set or functional grounding. The Band of Brothers series of squad-level tactical games from Worthington Publishing is an obvious example, as is the Carl Paradis’s No Retreat! theatre-encompassing games published by GMT. The attraction of a series game is not having to grok an entirely new rules-set each time you get a new game. If you have played and enjoyed Death Valley: Battles of the Shenandoah (GMT Games, 2019), then picking up Into the Woods: The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862 (GMT Games, 2022) will be a simple thing and no trouble. Some games included in this section are titles like No Peace Without Spain (Compass Games, 2011), the first in the No Peace series, now up to four titles in print with a fifth, covering the Thirty Years War, in development, but I only own the first, and Brief Border Wars (Compass Games, 2020) which is the only volume in print thus far, but at least a second is due for publication this year.

France '40 - a splendid example of a series game, or perhaps not.
I did an unboxing post that you can read here.

 - Expansions. Technically the base games and their expansions; these amount to additional material supplementary to an otherwise complete and self-contained game. An obvious contender for this section is Combat Commander: Europe (GMT Games, 2006), and it’s legacy of boxed and zip-loc bagged additional scenarios and materials, and the seemingly ever-growing family of Commands and Colors games, of which I possess – ahem – several, each with most or all of their additional boxes. This section also includes one-off expansions like SpaceCorp: Ventures (GMT Games, 2021) for John Butterfield’s SpaceCorp: 2025-2300AD (GMT Games, 2018). (Yes, I know SpaceCorp isn’t technically a wargame, but my list - my rules; the kid stays in the picture.)

C&C Napoleonics. Definitely an expansion; it says so on the box.

And so, to the numbers. It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that series games make the lion’s share of my collection, a whopping 49%. I think this is an artefact of historical trends of opportunities to play more than anything else. I’ve mentioned this previously, so I won’t go into too much detail here, but I didn’t have a regular wargaming habit until 2010. I had been buying wargames before that, and sometimes taking them out and soloing two-handed, and I had a regular RPG game I’d been going to for a few years by them, but in 2010 my wife was sick in hospital for about four months. In that time, Jess’s elder sister and her husband would have me around once a week for dinner – mostly to make sure I was looking after myself, I think – and one night I took over Commands and Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010), which T had just brought back for me from the US about a month before. That turned into a weekly-ish thing after Jess was back home, and we’ve been meeting most weeks since.

T is a doctor in a local hospital, and runs a section there, so he’s got a pretty serious job and he takes seriously, and doesn’t have a lot of bandwidth for anything outside of it. C&C: Naps is a relatively simple game at heart. There are variants to the rules for each army, but the core mechanisms stay true for the entire series. Which is why we played that pretty much exclusively for the first nine or so years, working through the expansions as they came out and revisiting the Peninsula when the mood took us (and wearing though one board and a set of dice labels in the process). Since about 2019 we’ve expanded to other flavours of Commands and Colors, and more recently (maybe the middle of 2022) we’ve been breaking ground outside the C&C system, most recently with WWII Commander: Battle of the Bulge (Compass Games, 2020 – you can find a review here), Brief Border Wars (Compass Games, 2019 – review forthcoming), and Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2017 – review here), but almost exclusively series games, so that when we move on to the next one - in this case, probably Napoléon,1807 (Shakos, 2020) – there’s less of a learning curve before getting down to playing.

Expansions make up the smallest section of my collection (only 20% in total), which did surprise me a little. While The Commands and Colors base games appear in the Series game count, all of the expansions appear in this section. The same with the Combat Commander: Europe boxed expansions and scenario packs, and the Panzer and MBT expansions, and every Flying Pig Games game that I own – and there are several – has at least one expansion in the list. But the above stated make up nearly all the count between them. There are a few strays, like the aforementioned Age of Iron and Rust for Time of Crisis, or Ventures for SpaceCorp, but not all that many. I guess this also speaks to the habit of keeping to series rules, especially for two-player games (something I’ll return to later).

Stand-alone games make up a goodly proportion of the collection (the remaining 31%). These are probably more representative of my magpie interests in history and mechanics. One of the joys of playing wargames is delving into the history represented, but another is seeing how the designer has attempted to recreate various aspects of the situation through the game’s mechanics. An obvious example of this is the optional or mandatory events in various card-driven games (CDGs) like Washington’s War (GMT Games, 2010), Dawn’s Early Light: the War of 1812 (Compass Games, 2020), or Plains Indian Wars (GMT Games, 2022 – you can read my review here). But often the best way to reflect a quirk of history is a simple mechanical adjustment, like the second impulse for motorised units in The Russian Campaign (Jedko Games, 1974) to replicate the blitzkrieg tactics of the Wehrmacht. Or how in La Primogenita (Legion Wargames, 2022), each unit is given a stacking “weight,” and the coarseness of the terrain can restrict the mass of firepower you can bring to bear on a target hex; it’s a small thing but it adds immeasurably to the verisimilitude of the experience of play. There isn't so much room for this kind of variation in series rules, but that's okay, because different types of games are trying to achieve different things.

Pacific Tide, Second Edition. Sand alone? Series game?
All I'm sure if is it's a really fun game.

Some people commit their ludological lives to a single pursuit, like chess. In our hobby t's more commonly a game-system like Advanced Squad Leader (Avalon Hill, 1985), or La Bataille (Clash of Arms/Marshal Enterprises). I can appreciate the allure of devoting oneself to exploring a rich vein of gaming goodness like that, but I think I'm a little too distracted by all the other opportunities and experiences offered in new games and rules. I have enjoyed Commands and Colors: Napoleonics every time it makes it to the table – I estimate T and I have played that game alone more than five hundred times now – but I like the new experiences and different periods as well. 

I suppose that's also what drives the need for new games, even when I have so many as yet unplayed. It's more than a simple desire of acquisition (though I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy obtaining and possessing new games, another aspect of the magpie instinct), but the exploration, the reveal, the chance to learn something I didn't know before. That last one is the most intoxicating.

I'd had intended to keep this to two parts, but I ran away a bit here, so next time I'll interrogate my pile of games through the lenses of Mode (more or less as per the new award categories included in the Charles S. Roberts Awards for 2023), and player-count. There's quite a bit to unpack there, so I'll try to keep the philosophical meanderings to a minimum.