GMT Games
Richard Berg & Mark Herman
2p/90min and up
Simple Great Battles of History is GMT's attempt to get their Great Battles of History series (Alexander, SPQR, Caesar, Caeser: Conquest of Gaul, Cataphract, and the various modules) off of the shelf and actually played face-to-face. The series, while a facinating topic, has been burdened with fairly high complexity and inconsistant scenarios.
Given this, it's interesting that I find the "Simple" angle of the rules to be one of the least compelling selling points of the new product. In truth, GBOH's main problem is really not complexity; GBOH is not simple, but it seems to be fundamentally on the same level as many of the modest-complexity games I play. It's more a matter of consistancy and coherency than complexity. Most of the GBOH rulebooks are rather poorly-presented and hard to learn, thus adding a significant amount of unnecesary complexity to the basic system. Combine that with the fact that the rules change subtly and in undocumented ways between games in the series, and you get a system that should be of only modest complexity but ends up with significant complexity issues. SGBOH scores on both these counts, giving you a rule set that is applicable across all the games in the series and presented in a reasonably orderly manner. In truth, though, while simpler than the system it replaces, it's not really a streamlined one; when I think of good modest-complexity wargames, I think of games systems like Royal Tank Corps, East Front, or even Great Campaigns of the American Civil War (except for those impenetrable flank modifier rules). SGBOH is fairly fiddly for a simple game, with a lot of hard-to-remember combat modifiers, special unit attributes, and different kinds of TQ checks.
My main beef with the system, though, is the new activation rules. The old GBOH system of ordered formation activations, with the number of activations dictated by momentum and the order affected by trumping, is now replaced with the players simply taking turns to activate any arbitrary formation. In the battles in Alexander, when formations are of fairly comparable power, this seems like no big deal; Chaeronea played quite well. At Zama though, theoretically much more interesting, the system became degenerate. The Romans and Carthaginians each have one overwhelmingly powerful formation: the legionary infantry for the Romans, the Heavy Cavalry for the Carthaginians. So our game simply degenerated into the one powerful formation being activated every impulse until it had done enough damage to rout the opposing army. Other formations were simply rooted in place, never moving (this leads to somewhat amusing effects, such as seeing the skirmishers frozen in place where they were left 15 turns ago). This felt decidedly wierd. Of course, the original GBOH often felt awfully gamey, but it seems to work in conveying a nice period feel; SGBOH often doesn't, quite. Also, Zama used to be reasonably balanced; now, with the Romans simply able to activate their very powerful legions every impluse, I have no idea how the Cartheginians are supposed to be competitive.
So I end up feeling somewhat conflicted about SGBOH. On the one hand, my GBOH collection has seen more play now, definitively saving it from the "for sale" bin. And those plays have, generally, been fun and engaging (with the exception of that Zama game). Certainly, the rules were a problem with GBOH: with perhaps only one or two scenarios per game which are balanced and/or interesting, the complexity of moving from game to game was a fairly serious problem. Trimming the game length down to somthing fairly short is good too, as you can play even some of the more unbalanced scenarios (that is to say, most of them) and have fun since they are pretty short. Chaeronea probably wasn't worth 5 hours in the original version, but at 1.5-2 hours or so it's good for a go (although it does seem the time estimates in the scenario book are a bit optimistic).
On the other hand, I still find myself wishing mainly for an aggressively edited series rulebook for these games. The basic GBOH game is quite good, and not vastly more complex than SGBOH. I liked Cataphract, as it seemed to capture all the good stuff from GBOH without taking the more drastic measures of SGBOH.
I guess my recommendation is that if you play and enjoy GBOH as it is now, there is certainly no reason to purchase SGBOH. If, however, you own Alexander, SPQR, or Caesar and rarely play, or would like to play with wider range of opponents, the $16-$20 you'll spend on the SGBOH rulebook is probably a good investment. Possibly SGBOH's most compelling application is as a stepping-stone to the full game. On the other hand, SGBOH has virtually no benefit for Cataphract players, and is fairly marginal for Caesar: Conquest of Gaul, as these systems are already significantly streamlined and superior to SGBOH in most ways (with the exception of the fact that the C:CoG rulebook is dreadful, worst of a not-overly-impressive bunch).
As a final note, it also should be mentioned that only Caesar: The Civil Wars is still in print (although this still has some of the biggest-name battles from any of the games). The remainder of the games remain fairly available on eBay, althogh they aren't cheap (though they weren't cheap when they were new, either).
© 2001 Chris Farrell
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