Games
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So my plan for yesterday evening was a first solo game of Valor & Victory. There's a nice little scenario that plays in about an hour including setup. Instead I ended up making chits.
This is a print & play squad-level wargame with about 12 pages of rules. Nothing too complicated in the actual gameplay but some of the scenarios are pretty big in the number of units and size of the maps. Like most games at this level of detail, you can pick the playtime by picking the scenario.
The first one I had in mind plays on a single map and has about six squads total. If I can figure out the basics on that one I'd bring it to my buddy Paul's place for the next step up against an opponent.
I got this thing in a trade. The guy on the other side of it got Zooloretto with four or five of the mini-expansions and I got V&V and Target Arnhem: Across 6 Bridges which I was ecstatic about because one of them would require me to expend actual effort to have and the other is out of print and hard to find. So he thought he really got a deal but for me it was just a nice set.
But the V&V was printed on thick paper and nothing else. Whisper-thin from a chit perspective. That's par for the course, and the real value in the package was the plush rulebook and the cheat cards printed in full color. The other value was that it got me off my butt and trying to improve on it. I printed the chits for the British Infantry and the heavy vehicles onto basic paper and then affixed it to that flexible foam stuff that you can buy at Michael's. It's adhesive on one side so it's just a peel and stick maneuver and it cuts easily enough with scissors.
For me it's a nice step up because I need the thickness to pick up the pieces. Euros have few enough pieces on the board so I can generally just slide whatever card I need to the edge to pick it up (except for the new Alhambra board with the score wrapped around the cards -- bad idea) but on a map with three-dozen chits or more that's often not an option. I worried they'd be too light, but they have a nice feel to them and they don't seem to cling to each other. The flexiness of them feels a bit out of the ordinary, but nothing to worry about. Nice and thick.
The foam sheets are 99 cents each and are 9x12 so they hold a lot of chit. I'm guessing about 35 cents per printed page on my printer, so for about six dollars I'm getting the entire western front, and the maps (I won't mount those) are 45 cents apiece on legal size paper, maybe a dozen total. Let's say five dollars for all the maps I will ever use. All the rules and quick-refs are already done, so I'll likely spend $11 on it and have a pretty plush version of a well-respected squad-level game.
Valor & Victory is definitely worth a look -- ASL style game with a very-well-illustrated 12 page rule book.
S.
