Friday - November 03, 2006Shifting SandsMulti-Man Publishing's new game on the North
African Theatre of WWII, by Michael Rinella, designer of Monty's Gamble: Market
Garden Wednesday - August 16, 2006Sunday - July 16, 2006ConsimWorld Expo, Part 3 of 3Getting into the right frame of mind for
EastFront or Here I Stand
Sunday - June 18, 2006ConsimWorld Expo, Part 2 of 3 - EastFrontFinally getting to play Summer '41 in
EastFront
Wednesday - June 14, 2006ConsimWorld Expo, Part 1 of 3 - EuroFrontYou can see my Flickr album of ConsimWorld Expo
photos (and some commentary) here.
Monday - May 15, 2006CarthageCarthage has, along with its predecessor Rise of
the Roman Republic, been sitting on my shelf, occasionally calling out to be
played, for about 3 years. Despite the appeal of the period, and the interesting
system, and the lack of competition, it has remained unplayed largely because it
has the appearance of fairly high complexity and because basically everyone I
game with has if not an outright aversion to, at least a healthy skepticism for
Richard Berg games.
But I finally got to play after all these years. Cool. What? Oh. You want to know how it went. Well, it's hard to say, actually. Monday - May 01, 2006Here I Stand, and big decksI have this hypothesis about GMT's card-driven
games: while the individual cards in these games were designed to evoke period
flavor, the
number
of Strategy Cards included is essentially arbitrary, and dictated by production
issues rather than game-design or pacing questions. Here is my
evidence:
Monday - April 17, 2006Quick Wargame Quick TakesCommand & Colors: Ancients from GMT, and Ted
Raicer's The First World War from Phalanx
Tuesday - March 21, 2006Here I StandGMT's new game on the Reformation, from Great
Campaigns of the American Civil War co-designer Ed Beach
Monday - March 20, 2006Sunday - February 26, 2006Twilight Struggle reviewI have added a review
of Twilight Struggle to the review
area.
Sunday - January 22, 2006Mark H. Walker's Lock 'n Load Band of HeroesA technical discussion of defensive fire
techniques in modern tactical games
Tuesday - January 03, 2006DowntownI finally had the chance to play a couple games
of Downtown: The Air War
Over Hanoi, 1965 to 1972. You know what game it reminds me of? SPQR. Yeah, the
game where you're commanding Roman
legions.
That might require some explanation. Thursday - December 01, 2005Triumph of Chaos, Part IICan the fairly good first impressions hold
up?
Tuesday - September 27, 2005Thursday - August 11, 2005Triumph of ChaosThe last two new wargames I've played, Grand
Illusion and Empire of the Sun, left me feeling respectively slightly
underwhelmed and extremely
frustrated. So it was with some trepidation that I embarked on Triumph of Chaos, the new
card-driven game from Clash of Arms based on the Paths of Glory engine. It's set
during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1921, a confused affair involving almost
anyone who could hitch a ride to the vicinity – not just Ukrainians
and Finns and Cossaks and Tajiks, but French, Poles, Americans, Czechs, Japanese
... you name it. Anyway, the game looked quite cool, but the rulebook had typos.
Some fairly serious ones. As I always say, if you can't use a spell-checker,
what are the odds you have the attention to detail required to get all the
details of a complex game design right? But in the end, I'm glad I tried it, and
after an admittedly brief play it seems like the most promising new game of this
type since Paths of Glory. It might even be able to cash in on the promise that
even Paths of Glory itself couldn't quite fulfill ...
Sunday - July 17, 2005Origins Report — WargamesRommel in the Desert, Hannibal: Rome vs.
Carthage, an update on the state of wargames at Origins, plus the new
releases.
Monday - June 20, 2005ConsimWorld Expo 5.0 - Part 3 of 3 - Europe EngulfedEurope Engulfed, 1939-1945, 3-players: how long
does it take, really? What if the German player is the designer? How about if
you insist on rolling all the dice? And is 1939-41 interesting?
Thursday - June 16, 2005Consimworld Expo 5.0 - Part 2 of 3 - EuroFront IIPlaying EuroFront II with the designer, Craig
Besinque.
Monday - June 13, 2005Consimworld Expo 5.0 - Part 1 of 3Or, as everyone calls it, MonsterCon. What was
new, what was cool, what wasn't. Part II: EuroFront. Part III: Europe
Engulfed.
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