By the Numbers: The War Room Ten Game Challenge - the Road(s) Not Taken

In my last By the Numbers post, I offered an exhaustively referenced and annotated list of the games that made the cut for my first run at the War Room’s 10 Game Challenge. But as I noted at the end of that post there were a handful of games that, for one reason or another, didn’t make the cut. For those who take an interest In these things, or who just like to root for the underdog, here is a short but equally exhaustively annotated list of the most seriously considered wargames that I ended up choosing to leave out.

I want to say first that not making the list is in no way an indictment on anyone of these games. They are all either games I’ve already enjoyed or ones I’ve been looking forward to getting to the table. In some cases, games least fit my sketchily defined criteria; some were definitely too long, some felt a little like doubling up. I could have filled a list with five Commands & Colors: Npoleonics (GMT Games, 2010) games (the base set and four Nation boxes), and showings from Commands & Colors: Medieval (GMT Games, 2019), C&C: Samurai Battles (GMT, 2021), Commands & Colors Tricorne: the American Revolution (Compass Games, 2017) and it’s sister game C&C Tricorne: Jacobite Rising (Compass Games, 2020), but I didn’t feel like that would really be in the spirit of the Challenge, and to be honest, while I love the C&C system, I like to spend time with other games as well.

Granada: Last Stand of the Moors – 1482-1492 (Compass Games, 2021)

This block game, inspired by the diceless combat system developed in Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan (GMT Games, 2011) was one of those miraculous finds, a second-hand game, still in it’s shrink-wrap, at a seriously reasonable price. I’ve been meaning to write up an unboxing of Granada for a couple of months, but there has always been something more pressing to deal with. It’s a gorgeous game; the start black and white pieces really pop of the muted tones of the board, and the cards are lavishly illustrated. The game is the whole package.

I’m still keen to get Granada to the table in 2025, but the sticking point is the duration; both the box and the BGG entry indicate the game will take between three and four hours to complete. Most of my gaming these days takes place on weekday evenings, so we tend to top out at two and a half hours (with an early start). I can get a longer session in by myself, but Granada isn’t a game I want to try to play solo – I think it deserves a proper run at it with two players. It may happen this year, but realistically I think I would have ended up playing one of my substitute games instead if it had been on the list.

 

Thirty Years’ War Quad, Second Edition (Decision Games,1995)

This was a recent acquisition, but something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’m morbidly fascinated by the Thirty Years War (and by the wars of the Early Modern period generally), and this game offers considerations of four of the most notable battles from the period. At university I wrote a paper on the campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus, and Lutzen, the battle brought is death, is featured in this quad set. The time seemed right. And yet…

Something that contributed to my decision not to go with a battle from this quad was the fact that my copy is second-hand and has been through the mill. This doesn’t bother me, especially as I had bought the set thinking I’d probably only ever play through the four games solo, which was a stipulation for the games on the challenge list (I wanted a majority of solo-able games in case I couldn’t find an opponent for some of the games). The maps are very much in the familiar 1980s SPI production style, not offensive in themselves, but not great television.

The clincher for me was the counters. I’m a counter-clipperer and working through the set over a couple of nights I realised that at for least two of the games had some counters had been lost, and replaced with plain white, hand-written counters. And, of course, they would have to be in the two games I wanted most to try out, Lutzen and Nordlingen. They are legible; I couldn’t say with certainty I could have done a better job. And I’m not saying I regret the purchase, but I don’t think I was to feature the game on the blog in the state it’s in. Call me prissy, but I wanted to keep the Ten Game Challenge to games that look nice set up on the board. I’m still keen to try it out sooner rather than later, and if I can get it to the table this year, I will write up an AAR, it just won’t be for the challenge.

 

Chancellorsville, 1863 (Worthington Games, 2020) (review)

I put Chancellorsville on the list after seeing Meandering Mike’s audience had picked it for his list. Mike set up a couple of viewer surveys to pick five (I think) of his games from a short list. One of the categories was games by Maurice Suckling, in which Chancellorsville beat out Freeman’s Farm (Worthington Publishing, 2019 – link to review here), Hidden Strike: American Revolution (Worthington Publishing, 2021), and Siege of Malta (Worthington Publishing, 2022 – link to review here). That reminded me of how much I enjoyed it as a solo game.

Chancellorsville has a nifty partial hidden movement mechanism, with two corners of the board showing mini-maps of the battlefield, each shielded from the other player. Movement of your own formations takes place here until a meeting occurs, at which time the units are transferred to the main board and things get interesting.

The hidden movement thing is approximated by a card deck – one for each opposing side – which acts as the bot for the opposition, directing the enemy’s priorities with uncanny seeming awareness of my own actions. The card bot (there are two decks, so you can play the Union or the CSA) is seriously one of the best I’ve come across.

It’s such a great solo experience that I’ve never got around to playing it with another person sitting opposite. That’s why I thought long and hard about putting it on my list. In the end, I demurred, and essentially for the same reasons as the next game on the list.

 

Flanks of Gettysburg: Little Round Top, Culp's Hill – July 1863 (Compass Games, 2024) (unboxing)

I’ve really enjoyed John Poniske’s games in the past; my first hex-and-counter ACW game was Ball’s Bluff (Legion Wargames, 2015), and Flanks of Gettysburg uses a system based on the Ball’s Bluff system, which has since been evolving through Belmont: Grant's Baptism of Command, November 7th, 1861 (Compass Games, 2017) and Fire on the Mountain: Battle of South Mountain September14, 1862 (Legion Wargames, 2022).

Basically, I dropped it because I already had three American Civil War games on the list; Brothers at War, 1862 (Compass Games, 2022), A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days of Gettysburg (Flying Pig Games, 2022), and Rebel Fury: Battles of the American Civil War (GMT Games. 2024), a respectable representation, I would think. I also toyed with adding Glory III (GMT Games, 2007 – unboxing). In fact, I could have easily made the ten challenge games all ACW battles, or at least all Nineteenth Century conflicts (Imperial Bayonets: We Were Not Cowards – Sedan 1870 (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2020) makes a fourth already), but I didn’t want to be that guy.

 

Prairie Aflame: The Northwest Rebellion, 1885 (Second Edition) (Legion Wargames, 2020) (unboxing)

I think I bought Prairie Aflame! Near the end of 2023 from my friendly local (one state over) game store, Milsims, along with another game, at least in part to get to the free shipping threshold. It wasn’t just a filler – I’d been interested in the game for some time, I had just intended to buy it direct from the publisher.

The argument against Prairie Aflame was length. The game comes with five battle scenarios and three campaign scenarios, one historical and two historically variable scenarios. The game has a really interesting battle resolution system which can be an interesting, if quite short, game in itself, but the full campaign is likely to take seven or eight hours. If I had somewhere to set it up and leave it I’d happily work through the game over a week, a turn or two a night, but we have a smallish apartment. And a cat. And my wife would have some strong opinions about me annexing one end of the dinner table for days on end.

 

Imperial Tide: The Great War, 1914-1918 (Compass Games, 2022) (unboxing)

I was very excited about Imperial Tide when it was announced. Milsims had a preorder up and they were due around the time of my birthday, so I ordered myself a treat. Six months after the due date, they admitted the games probably weren’t coming, and Compass was out of stock. I ended up getting something else with the store credit.

Then Bill mentioned in a Town Hall that the game had been reprinted and would be back in stock in a couple of months. I ended up getting a copy of this along with Paper Wars #81, which featured Hermann Luutman’s Position Magnifique: The Battle of Mars-la-Tour, 1870 (Compass Games, 2013, which, I confess, I haven’t even got around to punching and clipping yet), at the end of 2023, during the Compass Holiday Sale (always the most sensible time to buy games directly from this publisher).

Since then, I’ve read the rules, punched the game, and pushed a few counters around, but never actually played it. I have played Pacific Tide (Compass Games, 2019), another Greg Smith title which uses essentially the same, if slightly simpler, game mechanics, with the same solo mechanism, which I’ve really enjoyed, but I haven’t popped Imperial Tide yet. After looking forward to it for so long, I don’t know what held me back from getting Imperial Tide to the table, except that the last couple of years have been full of distractions. 2025 should (hopefully) bring something of a rebalance to our situation.

 

Armageddon War: Platoon-Level Combat in the End War (Flying Pig Games, 2018)

I backed Armageddon War on its first printing. It’s an innovative near-future game deeply rooted in hex-and-counter tradition, but there are some funky innovations baked in that make it completely its own thing. The continuous activation system keeps things fresh and the action running along at a good clip, and the colour-code damage dice make every combat roll an adventure. I backed the original Kickstarter campaign for Armageddon War (and the Burning Lands (Flying Pig Games, 2018) expansion), but while I really enjoyed the game (it’s not too hard to play solo), I haven’t played it a quite a while (it’s those big maps, I think). The recent Kickstarter campaign for a second printing got me all nostalgic to get it to the table again, which may manage, but I feel I owe it to some of my newer games to give them a spin. Like some others in this alternative list, I will try to get Armageddon War to the table again this year – I’d like to introduce it to some folks – but if I don’t, it will probably make next year’s Challenge list.

-----

So, there are the also rans. Or maybe that should be the Honourable Mentions. There were other games considered, but these are the ones that actually did make the long list, only to be cut in the end. Last year was, as I’ve noted, a little lacklustre, but I still managed to play 40 different wargames, of which 27 were new to me. In spite of not doing so well at my own self-appointed challenges in the past couple of years, I feel more confident about making it through this list, and hopefully squeeze a couple of these in as well, should the opportunity arise.