Stripped Down for Parts: Guerre Eclair

 

 

Oh, happy day! Designer Yasushi Nakaguro’s Guerre Eclair (NUTS! Publishing, 2026) arrived a couple of days ago, but I had some things to finish off before I could pull it apart and have a proper look at it. The game was originally released by BonSai Games in Japan under the name The Rise of Blitzkrieg (BonSai Games, 2019). I own several NUTS! games, but this was the first game I’d ordered directly from the publisher. This was an impulse buy – not something I’m prone to – and shipping coset nearly as much as the (discounted) game itself. Looking back on it, I should probably held off and ordered it from Hexasim, along with La Der des Ders (Hexasim, 2025) and saved a few Euros on shipping, but Guerre Éclair did arrive inside of two weeks, which is quite impressive.

Guerre Eclair is the third in NUTS!’ Combat Rations series, following up from 300: Earth & Water (NUTS! Publishing, 2018) and Port Arthur (NUTS! publishing, 2020). The games in the series (thus far all reprints of BonSai games, as will be the fourth instalment – check out my interview with Mr Nakaguro for more) come in a uniform clamshell box, with a small, mounted board, nice components and cards

Each game in the Combat Rations series has had a different artist attached to the job. For Guerre Eclair, NUTS! went with Zuzanna Wollny. Ms Wollny is better known for her book and poster illustration work and for her truly stunning murals. The box cover is a sepia monochrome illustration reminiscent of a French soldier’s nightmares of the Front; tanks and dive-bombers baring down on the ill-lead defenders of the homeland. The result is effective and helps reinforce the theme and set the pace of the game. But it doesn’t set a rigid path for the rest of the art, as we will see shortly.

The clamshell box design. This appeals to my inner product engineer.

The defining feature of the Combat Rations series – for me at least – is the clamshell enclosure. The roughly C5 envelope-sized box is hinged and sealed with a magnetic clasp. Theis series isn’t the first to use the clamshell design (I have a couple of Osprey games that sport this style of case), and I don’t think it would be appropriate for a lot of games, but it’s a good fit for the Combat Rations ethos of short, numerically low-component, highly replayable games that will travel well – in a case or a backpack. If I was travelling with one, I would probably put an elastic band around the whole thing, just to be sure, but I’ve always had a belt-and-braces approach in regard to keeping things together.

Inside the box. This also doubles as a handy dice tray.

NUTS! Publishing always puts a premium on presentation, and the Combat Rations games are no exception. The inside of the box, looks like an ammunition box that’s been repurposed to hold a French infantryman’s personal effects. This was the same conceit that lined the Port Arthur box, only with a Japanese soldier’s ephemera. It’s an oddly affecting touch, bringing the historical event down to the level of the personal.

The box-back. 

The box-back description leads with a short description of the historical situation, the German invasion of Belgium, Holland, and France in May 1940, as well as a brief account of the game play. The usual caveats of two-players – I don’t see how you could play an effective solo game with the amount of hidden information crucial to play – and a recommended age of fourteen and up are advised. Forty-five minutes is the advised game duration, which I think would be true for anyone familiar with the game, but I’d anticipate an hour or so for an introductory game.

The rulebook.

The rulebook A5 in size, is printed in full colour on a good weight of low-gloss paper-stock. It runs to twenty pages, while the rules proper amount to eighteen pages (including nearly five pages of illustrated examples of play). The rules are pretty straightforward - number of the game’s concepts are familiar from 300: Earth & Water, but executed a little differently. 

Sample spread of the rules. The examples of play appear on a yellow background.

I’ll save the recounting of play for an AAR, but I would say that, in my experience with Mr Nakaguro’s games, simple rules bely rich, decision-point filled gameplay.My only complaint would be an unjust one; the font is a little small for me to read without glasses, but this is a grievance directed more at the injustices of age and decrepitude than the quality of the product, which is undeniably excellent.

The game board. Once again my crappy phone camera does not do justice
to the rather lovely artwork.

The map board is – as one would expect – small (roughly 11” by 17”); it is however mounted, and both attractive and functional. The art is a departure from the original Japanese release, which took a more utilitarian approach with a political-style map – it reminded me a little of the European campaign map in Hitler’s Reich (GMT Games,2018). Ms Wollny’s map is representative of the terrain encompassed in the theatre as it would appear during summer campaign; the lighter greens of the grassy fields give way to the dark, foreboding tones of the Ardennes. The movement in the game is point to point, with clear paths marked out between locations. Each location is defined by its shape; representing a town or city (ellipsis), a port (diamond, with an anchor) or a fortress (heptagon, with a turret silhouette). Belgian locations are marked in yellow, and the single Dutch city, Dordrecht, in orange. Control of locations is crucial to Grman victory, something we’ll touch on later. Finally, there are four Bases, three German – Saarbrücken, Prüm, and Düsseldorf – and one for the Allies – Paris, at the opposite end of the board.

Also incorporated into the edges of the board are a turn track (five turns, each representing roughly a week across May and June), and a Momentum pendulum track. Momentum is treated as a currency in the game, allowing the players to spend points gained on small advantages.

The German Shield fronts, illustrated in the sepia tones of a dust-infused breaking dawn.

Associated with the German bases are three card shields. These will conceal the German player’s division of forces across the three bases. The German player divvies up his available forces across the three bases in response to their victory objectives (more on this when we gat to the cards), and in response to the Allied troop placement, which is completed first.

The German-facing side of the shields. These conceal the players distribution of troops
across the three bases.

The shields as printed double-sided on light card, each with a unique illustration on the opponent-facing side and the name of the base printed on the German player side. They are perfectly adequate to their task in structure and size and come pre-folded rather than simply scored on the fold, which is another nice touch. I don’t know about others, but I always seem to mess up and mis-crease at least one of the folds, left to my own devices.

Clockwise from Top left: French (blue), German (grey), and BEF (ochre) units,
and the two Tracking discs for the Tern and Momentum tracks.

The game has no counter-sheet, but instead uses little wooden meeples – soldiers and tanks representing French (blue), British (ochre) and German (grey) forces – where the BonSai release had similarly coloured cubes and discs. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded if the publishers had decided to go with blocks, but the end result is more evocative, with infantry and armour being instantly discernible, and more familiar to Euro-gamers trying out a war-game.

One thing I can appreciate is the attention to detail. The Allied and German tank pieces are different silhouettes. It’s a little thing, but it indicates the care that’s gone into the preparation of the game as clearly as a bowl of M&Ms with all the red ones removed.

Sample cards from the Operations decks for the Allied (left) and German players.

Guerre Eclair comes with three short decks of cards; an eighteen-card German deck, A fourteen-card Allied deck, and a four-card Objectives deck, as well as a single Surrender card. These are standard poker-sized cards, and are printed on a good weight of card stock. Guerre Eclair is a Card Driven Game (CDG), but instead of dealing off the top of the deck, the players can choose which cards they wish to utilise in that round. Cards can be spent to make a move action or utilised for their event. Some cards are only usable in combat for some kind of benefit

The cards are beautifully presented, with thematic art and clear instructions. The art is what I’d call realistic through an impressionist filter. Given the physical scale of the game, the development group may have been tempted to go with a cartoonish style for the artwork generally. Instead, the pictures maintain the serious tone of the game and its subject. Even the choice of fonts for the titles, each reminiscent of period propaganda posters from France and Germany respectively, maintain the thematic integrity of the art.

The four German Objective cards (only two ever in play, with just one revealed to the
Allied player and one hidden), and the Allied Surrender card. I've gone through the
rules once but am still at a loss as to the purpose of the Surrender card. I'm sure
I've just missed something obvious.

The game has four Objective cards, which provide the victory conditions for the Germans. This makes things interesting and adds to the replayability of the game. We’ve seen the same device in another France’40 game, Dunkirk: France 1940 (Worthington Publishing, 2018) but there’s an added twist here; at the beginning of the game, the German player draws and Objective card, then places it where both players can see it. This is the open objective. He then draws a second Objective card, but this one is concealed from the Allied player. To win the game, the German player must meet the demands of one of these Objective cards. This will be easier said than done; while the Germans have advantages in hand-size and a numerical superiority in available troops, the Allies only have to delay the Axis progress over five rounds to spoil a German victory.

The game also comes with four 10mm dice. I've yet to haven't to take the game out for
a spin, but I suspect there may be a case for a couple of additional bones to avoid
the occasional consecutive roll for numbers.

Finally, the game comes with four small but quite readable black six-sided dice. These are nice dice, with a good weight despite their diminutive size. The beauty of the clamshell case is the game comes with its own dice tray.

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I’ve been on a bit of a Napoleonics jag of late, so I think it’s time to mix it up a bit. A fast game is indeed a good game, especially on a school night, so I hope to get an AAR of our first Guerre Éclair game to you, faithful reader, within the next couple of weeks (in between further Napoleonic excursions, I'm sure).

Blog Note: Big in Japan

 

Last year I researched and wrote up my first research feature for A Fast Game called The Value Proposition of Wargaming Awards - the Publishers' Perspective (I also wrote a TL/DR summary for the time-poor and attention-deficient). I contacted dozens of publishers in North America, Europe, and Asia, asking them about their experiences receiving nominations for or winning wargame awards. Nearly half of the companies I contacted replied – something I’m still humbled by – and one of the publishers that replied was veteran designer Yasushi Nakaguro (arguably best known in the West for his game, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: War in Asia and thePacific (BonSai Games, 2017), which appeared in Issue 9 of MMP’s Special Ops magazine) who runs BonSai Games in Japan. Mr Nakaguro was in the unique situation of having three games of his design nominated, released by two different avenues, BonSai and French publisher, Nuts! Publishing (I’ve written about one of these titles, 300: Earth and Water (BonSai Games, 2018; Nuts! Publishing, 2020) here).

BonSai is a small operation with a comparatively large output; along with a fairly busy release schedule of wargames both locally designed games and English-language titles translated to Japanese, BonSai also produces a quarterly wargaming magazine, Banzai, which includes a game in every issue (like the rest of the magazine, the rules are presented in kanji, although translations are sometimes posted to a given game’s BGG page).

I’m delighted to report that the Value Proposition of Wargaming Awards article is going to feature – translated into Japanese, of course – in the next issue of Banzai, no. 28 which, according to BonSai’s most recent newsletter post, will be available at their online store from February 20. If you’d like a copy (and why wouldn’t you?), best get in quickly as the previous three issues at least have completely sold out pretty soon after release.

 

 

Stripped Down for Parts: Port Arthur

 

Charles S. Roberts Award 2024 nominee for Best New Edition of a Previously Published Game

 

Port Arthur (Nuts! Publishing, 2024) is the second release in French game company Nuts! Publishing’s Combat Rations series. Both this and the first in the series, 300: Earth & Water (Nuts! Publishing, 2021 – you can read my review here) were designed by Yasushi Nakaguro and previously published in Japan by BonSai Games, as is the projected third game in the series, Guerre Éclair (Nuts! Publishing, ~2025), originally released as The Rise of Blitzkrieg: The Fall of France, 1940 (BonSai Games, 2019), is due out later this year.

Port Arthur is an asymmetric game about the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. This conflict saw the defeat of the Russian Empire and the removal of its navy as a credible force on the world stage, and started the Japanese military on a road to national domination and empire building which would lead with tragic inevitability to the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, and the nation’s wholesale defeat for years later. It’s a big canvas to be covered by such a small game, but 300: Earth & Water deals with successive generations of Persian rulers trying to bring a few belligerent city-states to submission (and failing each time, historically). Mr Nakaguro is adept at drawing the key threads from historical conflicts and weaving them into compelling, playable narratives.

Port Arthur shares the signature Combat Rations series magnetic clasp
clamshell enclosure. All up, it's a gorgeous package.

Like 300: Earth & Water, Port Arthur comes in a clamshell-style box, fastened with a magnetised clasp. I was a little suspicious of these when I first got 300, but the box both opens easily and secures well. It no doubt helps that the materiel of the game collectively doesn’t weigh too much. The box is roughly the size of a fat B5 envelope, or a 280-page Picador paperback (or a bit shorter than a VHS cassette case), so they’ll slip easily into a briefcase or backpack for a traveling game.

The artwork for the whole package was provided by game artist, Maud Chalmel. Ms Chalmel is an accomplished illustrator in the area of family games, but I believe this her first venture into wargaming. Some people have talked about Port Arthur having a cartoonish quality to the artwork – a view get if based on the box-cover alone – but taken as a whole this description does the work justice. Ms Chalmel brings to every aspect of the game an art-nouveau quality that is both historically appropriate - it was popular in fin de siècle Europe and elsewhere and itself references the influence of the Ukiyo-e tradition. The result feels appropriate for the subject, and the whole effect is really quite stunning.

The box back.

Thew back of the box is less forthcoming about the game than I would have expected. It begins with a paragraph referencing the key events of the Russo-Japanese War – the invasion of Korea and the battles of Mukden (on land) and Tsushima (at sea), and the subsequent destruction of Russia’s Baltic Fleet. The box-back also lets us know that this is meant to be a two-player game for players fourteen and up, and that the playing time should clock in at around 40 or so minutes.

The rulebook - sixteen pages of full-colour goodness (about fourteen pages
of rules, including illustrations).

The rulebook for Port Arthur has been printed on a good weight of a higher gloss paper (the kind more commonly seen in Euro-games) and runs to just sixteen pages. I am still going through the rules but, so far, the English translation is solid (unlike a lot of European publishers, Nuts! tends to print separate copies in French and English), and I don’t anticipate any difficulties getting the game to the table, barring the usual time and opponent-availability issues.

The mounted map. Lush.

The board is gorgeous. It might well be one of my favourite game boards for its appearance. Like 300, it is a small, for panel – A3 paper sheet-sized – mounted board, covering Japan, the Korean Peninsula, China, Manchuria, and Russia, with the surrounding waters divided into sea areas, and holding boxes for the ports of Vladivostok, Port Arthur, and Diego Suarez. Movement is regulated by point-to-point locations on land, and by area movement for sea-borne ships.

Along the left edge of the board is the game’s scoring track. Like 300, the game scores on a pendulum track, beginning at zero, and scoring at the end of each turn. Unlike 300, there is no sudden death victory if a side reaches the maximum points (five) – the game plays out for the full six turns. At the end of the game, Japan has to have points on their side of the scoring track, and maintain control of Mukden to gain a win, otherwise its an automatic win for the Russians.

Two A5 punchboards. The counters come out cleanly - no sanding.

The counters are pre-rounded easy-punch pieces printed on a heavy weight grey-core cardstock. The majority of the counters represent the ships of the Russian and Japanese fleets, but game markers and a turn track are also included in the mix. There is also a Port Arthur Blockade marker that gets placed n the board when the Japanese player manages to restrict navigation to and from the port (the actual locations of Vladivostok and Port Arthur on the map are indicated by colour-coded anchor symbols linking the holding boxes to their geographical position.

As with everything else, the counters and markers just look really good. The ship counters are rectangular and feature a full-strength side on the front and a damaged side with a slightly greyed-out image on the back. The Russo-Japanese War was rough on the Russian navy, which ended up loosing the bulk of not one, but two fleets.

Player Aid Card. Small but useful.

Port Arthur comes with a single, double-sided Player Aid Card, printed on a really light cardstock. The front offers set-up notes and an annotated Sequence of Play, while the verso presents further notes for conducting sorties and naval operations, and naval battles. Two PACs would have been nice, but a lot of games deliver a single

Dice and meeples.

The game also comes with six dice and six Japanese soldier and officer meeples. The dice are on the smaller side, but that’s fine in a travel-size game. The meeples are used to mark locations on the Manchuria land-track where the Japanese player has conducted successful attacks. I get that fancy meeples (these do look very cool) are a selling point for some, and Nuts! Publishing is a business with a reasonably large footprint in the family game market as well, but for my money I would have been happy with wooden cubes or discs as markers. This by no means detracts from the game, I just don’t think it will add all that much to my experience of it.

The box interior art; a really nice finishing touch to an all-round attractive game. 

The box interior art found in Port Arthur is one of those strictly unnecessary but really nice details that Nuts! Publications often squeeze into their publications. While it doesn’t add anything to gameplay, it The enclosure is styled as an occasional box for keeping photos and other mementos that might be kept by an operational officer to remind him of home. It’s thoughtful and eloquent, a reminder of the humanity of those involved at the very outset of one of the most inhumane periods of modern history.

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So, that’s Port Arthur. Add one more title to my TBP list. I would like to get an AAR posted in the next month or two, but I really can’t promise that. It does look like an interesting and challenging game though, and with a play-time of about three quarters of an hour, it’s definitely a contender for a weeknight turn

 

 

Stripped Down for Parts: Stalingrad Roads

 

 

I’ve written here before about building a wargame collection, but something I don’t think I mentioned is the value of being a little bit obsessive. There is a Sydney game store from which I’ve bought a few games over the years. It’s more of a general interest or Family game store, offering only a smattering of wargames, and those from the usual suspects, like GMT and Compass Games. The store has always provided very good service, but the thing that keeps me checking in every so often is they’ll do extravagantly low prices when they get down to the last couple of a title in stock. This was how I manages to score a copy of Stalingrad Roads: Battle on the Edge of the abyss (Nuts Publishing, 2024) for about half the regular retail price.

I’m a fan of Nuts! Publishing’s games; they tend to be well presented and well executed, and all-in-all, good value for money. Being a French company, you used to have to go looking a little harder for them, but Nuts! seems now to be a part of the Ares Games distribution channel, so we’re seeing the likes of Stalingrad Roads and Italia 1917-1918: A Farewell to Arms (Nuts! Publishing, 2024) appearing in Australian stores.

Stalingrad Roads is the third in a series of games, preceded by Liberty Roads (Hexasim, 2009), and Victory Roads: From Bagration to the Fall of Berlin 1944-1945 (Hexasim, 2015), which cover Normandy to the Rhine and the Russian offensive respectively.. The earlier games are generally well-regarded, but have been out of print for a while now, which is a shame, because after seeing Stalingrad Roads up close, I'd be keen to try the system on a grander scale. 

The Stalingrad Roads box cover is striking, using an iconic photograph taken during the battle (the same photograph used (though slightly altered) on the cover of the first edition Old School Tactical: Volume 1 – Fighting on the Eastern Front 1941/42 (Flying Pig Games, 2016)), but using a saturated red filter on the original black and white image. The title font is also reminiscent of soviet propaganda posters (and film advertisements form the thirties). The overall effect doesn’t leave you in any doubt about the subject of the game (if the title in itself wasn’t quite enough).

The back of the box.

The box back is split roughly into two halves, with the top half showing off the map and pieces mid-offensive (with the two hexes of Stalingrad tucked into a bottom corner), and the bottom half offering a written description of the game’s parameters. The details at the very bottom of the box-back let us know (in keeping with EU rules that I believe kicked in just last year) that the whole box is recyclable (perish the thought), that the game is intended to be played by two people, that the recommended age for play is fourteen, and that – depending on the scenario – the duration of the game is likely to run between one and five hours.

The text does let the reader into one of the things that makes Stalingrad Roads special. The two sides require different approaches to play. The Soviet player is restricted in how he can attack, being allowed only to allocate one major offensive a couple of minor offensives per turn. They won’t be able to attack everywhere they would like, and must marshal their resources where they are likely to be most effective in bringing pain to the Axis forces. This will inevitably be easier said than done.

The Axis player has a different set of problems. Their primary concerns will be to keep their forces in supply, and to keep in the Fuhrer’s good books. The Axis can’t mark their own offensives, they can only respond to the Soviet threat when it comes. Heady stuff.

Rulebook. 

The Stalingrad Roads rulebook is slim for what promises t be a pretty deep game, running to just 28 pages. Of that count, the full-page cover and reproduction of the Combat Resolution and Weather tables features on the general Player’s Aid Cards reduce the actual content to 26 pages, of which 21 cover the actual rules; four pages are devoted to the scenarios, and he last internal page, a Table of Contents (this seems a little fully-loaded cart before the horse, to me, but at least the booklet gets a ToC when it seems many that should, don’t).

Rules sample pages with examples of play

The rulebook is printed on a nice high-sheen paper, set in what looks like a clean Garamond laid out in two columns with a separating bar, clear titles and an indexed numbering system for rules and sub-clauses (with play examples in a sans-serif font, three columns, and a lighter colour ink to differentiate them from the rules proper). The rules-in-play examples are prudently and functionally illustrated. All in all, the production is very nice, and quite easy to read. I’m working through the rules at time of writing, and considering these have no doubt been translated from French to English, the stitching doesn’t show at all; the rules – thus far, at least – are clear, concise and readily understandable.

Stalingrad Roads comes with two sheets of die-cut counters, printed on a good weight of grey-core card-stock. These are all half-inch counters with centre-nubs. They punch out cleanly (the more obsessive ay want to take the worst of the nub off with an emery board or a couple of wipes of a very fine-grade sandpaper, but I don’t think most folks will have an issue with them). In spite of their diminutive size, the units counters are quite readable. The registration overall is very good, and this is helped by the counters not being overloaded by information.

Units have a unit (formation) designation, a representative symbol (NATO-symbol for infantry, cavalry, mountain infantry, security (Sicherungs) units and HQs, and vehicle illustrations for armoured units), three numbers in a row, representing (left to right) Attack strength, Defence strength and Movement allowance (HQs have a Command Radius value instead of an Attack strength, which makes perfect sense). Some units are adorned with a star, indication their elite status. Soviet units are either Regular or Guards units; Axis units are, in the majority, German Wehrmacht with, some Waffen SS formations, and representation the other Axis powers (Romanian, Hungarian and Italian).

A feature of the game is the Support markers that each side can allocate to their operations as suited. Not all will be available all of the time, and the use of one Support resource may prohibit it's subsequent use at a later stage. AAS I've alluded elsewhere, Stalingrad Roads functions very much in the Operational space of wargames. You will be wrestling scarcity at least as much you'll be battling with your opponent.

The game comes with several Player Aids. the first two are identical, double-sided PACs, each presenting the things you’ll need most often during a game; on the obverse, a reprinting of the last page of the rulebook, offering the Combat Resolution and Weather tables, and the reverse presenting a through Terrain Effects Chart.

Axis Player Aids. Each side has a double-sided support marker directory and an area
to keep track of out of play units, but the priorities of the two sides are so different,
this is where the similarities end. 

The other Axis Player Aids include charts related to the Hitler Approval track, Axis Supply and the Air Bridge supply effects. The Soviet Player Aids feature Areas for marshalling Major and Minor Offensive support markers and a table for the Acquisition of Air Support. Both sides also get spaces for housing Units eliminated or removed from play, and each gets a descriptive chart with a precis of each Support marker available to the given side.

Wintergerwitter scenario card.

Operation: Uranus scenario card.

Each of Stalingrad Roads’ scenarios has set up notes in the rulebook and an accompanying sheet or sheets that let you keep track of your side’s reinforcements and offer handy reminders of any finicky rules at play for the given situation. The shorter scenarios – Wintergerwitter and Uranus – each have just one sheet shared by the players.

The two Backhand Blow scenario cards.

Each side gets their own card for the Backhand Blow scenario.

Star and Gallop scenario cards. Note the shared reinforcement portion.

Star and Gallop has the set-up information and Support allocations for each side on separate cards but space is shared on the Axis card for both sides’ reinforcements.

The Campaign scenario sheets in all their overwhelming glory. The Campaign game is
actually listed as the third of the five scenarios included in the package.

The Campaign game, at seventeen turns the longest of the scenarios, accommodates each side with two cards of their own. Overall there’s a good spread of complexity and

The play area. Try as I might, I couldn't get an adequate photo of the map, so here is a
rendering of the designer, Nicolas Rident, posted on Boardgamegeek.

The map for Stalingrad Roads is slightly different in size to the 22” by 34” poster-sized maps we’re used to seeing from American publishers. Being a European publisher, Nuts! usually does their sheet maps on A1-sized sheets (roughly 23.4” by 33.1”). It’s not that big a difference, and if you’re using a plexi sheet over it, a poster-size (24”by 36”) sheet will still accommodate the whole map, if a little snuggly.

The map incorporates a Turn Track, Fuhrer’s Approval Track, and a general track for other bookkeeping needs. Overall, it's quite a handsome map, visually attractive without being too fussy. The limited colour-palette is easy on the eyes, but still manages to highlight both the natural geographic features and the artificial structures – cities and towns, road and rail – without making any feature feel tacked on or out of place.

The Wintergerwitter scenario mini-map. Small but perfect in every detail,

The recommended starting point for the game is the Wintergerwitter scenario. This is played on a mini (11” by 8 ½”) map provided for the purpose, with the unit placement handily preregistered on the map. The map is printed on the verso of one of the Soviet Player Aid sheets, but given he scenario runs through just two turns, it’s absence shouldn’t be conspicuous.

Overall, the scenario and player aid cards are very well resented and easily navigable. My only criticism is the weight of card they’re printed on. It barely warrants the epithet of card. I’ll be looking at sleeving these in something a little stiffer, which is an unusual step for me. But given the sheer number of the sheets provided – thirteen in total – I can appreciate the decision to go with a lighter stock. It’s not a dealbreaker, but I think the use a slightly heavier stock would have made for a better game experience. But now I'm just nit-picking.

Finally, Stalingrad Roads comes with a stash of baggies for sorting your counters, and two six-sided dice, appropriately in Soviet red and German field grey. The box itself looks on the thin side, but is really quite sturdy.

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I have a soft spot for French-produced games. I think this is because I have yet to be disappointed by one. On the face of it, Stalingrad Roads seems to be unexceptional to that tradition. I can’t say when I’ll manage to get this game to the table, but I don’t want to leave it too long.

2024 Q4 Report: Focussing on the Positive

  

For a more complete picture of how the year panned out, I'll refer you to my previous reports for Q1, Q2, and Q3.

 

At the beginning of the year, I made some bold claims about what I hoped to achieve this year at A Fast Game. But that was twelve months ago, when I was young and full of hope, dreams and big ideas. Since than we’ve been through another bout of COVID and sundry other maladies, a bereavement in the family, and a score of other outside forces indifferent to my wish to play and write about wargames.

If you look over the last three Quarterly Report, you’ll see a growing sense of my inability to meet the goals I’d set myself. I’m not beating myself up too much about these shortcomings. After nearly a year of writing A Fast Game, I just didn’t anticipate 2024 being so difficult, and not just for me but nearly everyone around me as well. So, the tone of this post is one of an underlying resignation.

The anniversary of my second year writing A Fast Game will be January 31 next year (nearly this year, now). I’ll talk about all my unmet goals and missed opportunities and the ramifications of those disappointments closer to that date. I’ve also talked about the year’s gaming numbers in an earlier post. I’ll revisit some overall numbers in my anniversary post in a month. I’m not going to rehash all the things that led me to not meeting any of my stated goals – I’ve already spilt too many pixels on that. Here instead, to finish the calendar year on a high note, I’d like to spend some time reflecting on what games I enjoyed the most and what ones surprised me. 

If I could change one thing about the game, it would probably be a slightly stronger
colour-tone variation between the Union and CSA forces. Just being picky here.

Rebel Fury: Battles of the American Civil War (GMT Games, 2024)

I’ve never got to play Mark Hermann’s Gettysburg (RMB Studio, 2018) that appeared in C3i Magazine and was subsequently released as a standalone game. I’d heard about the intention of the game and it sounded interesting, but I was keener to try Mr Herman’s follow-up, Waterloo Campaign, 1815 (RMB Studio, 2019) which came out in the very next C3i issue.

I think I was about order no. 140-something when Rebel Fury hit the P500 list on the GMT website. I am committed to learning the Great Battles of the American Civil War system, and have a couple of titles in that series (all of which at this stage remain unpunched), and I’m intrigued by the Great Campaigns series, though it’s a big outlay for an untried game when you build in shipping costs and a tanking Australian dollar (great for exports, not so much for wargamers), but I really wanted a game that would let me play out a significant battle on a single map in a relatively short time span (like a couple of hours on a weekday evening). Rebel Fury seemed to fit those requirements, on paper at least.

When I received the game and started to dig into it, I was floored. It’s high-level – infantry and cavalry divisions, with much smaller ad hoc detachments – and artillery is somewhat abstracted in the game; these are two things that a lot of folks don’t like in their ACW games. But Rebel Fury does what it sets out to do, shifting the focus from combat to manoeuvre, which is arguably where the best commanders in the conflict excelled, and it does it well. Rebel Fury is a very fast playing (once you get the hang of it) game that really does let you fight the Battles of Spotsylvania or Chattanooga in an evening. 

Put on the spot, I nominated Rebel Fury as my favourite game of 2024 in the Armchair Dragoons Year End Wargaming Survey (which at the time of publication, was still open, and I would encourage anyone who hasn’t yet participated to do so). On reflection, I think I would stand by that assessment. On top of an innovative and fast-playing system, there are six separate scenarios in the box, two battles to a map. Rebel Fury represents real value for money.

So. Much. Game.

300: Earth & Water (Nuts! Publishing, 2020)

This game was a revelation. So much deep strategic goodness in such a small package. Maybe it’s something about the Greek theme; Agamemnon (Osprey Games, 2016) has a similar vibe, only much more dream-like (and much more of a puzzle game), where 300 is firmly rooted in the history of the situation. For the full rundown, take a look at my review.

All the Conquerors series games have exceptional components and gorgeous maps.

Napoléon 1807 (Shakos, 2020)

I was already a fan of Napoléon1806 (Shakos, 2019 – you can read my review here), so mechanically I wasn’t confronted with too many new rules or moving parts in Napoléon 1807. But – no to take away from its predecessor – Napoléon 1807 offers so much more. Firstly, the map is 50% larger than Napoléon 1806 (36” by 24”), and where the original game had just two scenarios (the campaign scenario and a three-turn introduction), Napoléon 1807 offers twelve scenarios, plus a thirteenth to fold the first game into the second.

I cannot say enough good things about the Conquerors series mechanics. There’s the over-riding conflict with your opponent, but both players are playing against the exhaustion of their own units and the rapidly diminishing number of turns available to achieve what you need to win.

I’m part way through penning a review of Napoléon 1807, but I just want to play it a couple of times more before I finish and post it, so bear with me. A while ago, I grabbed the last copy of Napoléon 1815 (Shakos, 2022) that Hexasim had in stock, although I think it’s back in print again. I’m waiting for an opportunity to play it three-player; that may happen later in the year, fingers crossed.

Blocks. Lots of blocks.

Commands and Colors: Medieval (GMT Games, 2019)

This was a revisitation rather than a new experience. Don’t get me wrong, I always liked C&C: Medieval, but it was never my favourite. T and I played it a lot when it first arrived but slipped back into the more familiar Commands and Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010) after a couple of months. I wanted to write a review of C&C: Medieval when the Crusades Expansion (GMT Games, 2024) was getting close to release, so I got T to play it again with me about four or five times.

Every C&C game has its own character and its own rhythm, and C&C: Medieval is no different. Except it’s quite different. It’s different from its closest comparison game, Commandsand Colors: Ancients (GMT Games, 2006); combat in Medieval tends to be less structured and a lot more dynamic, with a much greater reliance on cavalry units to harass the opponent’s flanks or to shatter a weak centre. The use of Inspired Leader tokens with tailored sets of orders for each side also helps to provide a level of verisimilitude to each game, and adds a sense of player agency that can sometimes feel diminished with a few unlucky dice rolls in a row. It’s rare a given order will win you the game, but a well-timed bit of inspiration may put a thumb on the balance and set you in a better position for a favourable outcome.

I don’t think I would be overstating it to say rediscovering C&C Medieval has brought back some of the magic I felt when I first began playing Command and Colors fourteen years ago. With the onslaught of Christmas and all that entails, we haven’t had a chance to play the Crusades expansion yet, but I’m hoping to post a review by the end of January.

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So, there are four games that had an outsized impact on me this year. There were others, of course. I just recently played Samurai Swords (Milton Bradley, 1986) for the first time and was amazed how strategically deep a commercially made and distributed game could be.

Another game that blew me away was Saigon 75 (Nuts! Publishing, 2023), a short, brutal game about the last years of the American War in Vietnam. I’ve only played it once so far, but with a few more losses (and some therapy sessions) I’ll bring you a review. If the subject doesn’t excite you, designers Jean-Phillippe Barcus and Pascal Toupy ported the system to Revolutionary France with Vendée 93 (Brotherhood of Simulations, ~2025), set in the aftermath of the execution of Louis XVI. The system is taut and grinding, a really intense 50-or-so minutes of immersive gaming.

Things get bleak for the ARVN player very quickly.

As for the future, I’m looking forward to (finally) tabling A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days of Gettysburg (Flying Pig Games, 2022), every opportunity to do so in 2024 having eluded me. I’m also looking forward to revisiting Napoléon 1807 and Rebel Fury, and hopefully some neglected acquisitions like Imperial Tide: The Great War, 1914-1918 (Compass Games, 2022) and Coalition: The Napoleonic Wars, 1805-1815 (Compass Games, 2021), to name just two. The parlous state of the Australian dollar means I’ll have to be more circumspect about buying new games, but the happy knock-on effect of that will be having the capacity to spend time with some games I already own.

So, the plan is to continue what I’m doing, and hope people will still show up and have a read (maybe leave a comment), and maybe learn something or be inspired to try something they haven’t before. So, thank you most sincerely for reading this far, and Happy New Year. And I hope you’ll visit again in 2025.