Calling all Grognards!!

TDC and WED are substantially more accessible than World at War. Battle for Normandy, while it has some rules issues, is still a relatively straightforward game.

WaW is basically a throwback to the brute force/kitchen sink era of gaming, where no chrome is left behind. The original game, which is what, 35 years old, was complex for its time, but relatively simple compared to the behemoth that , six editions later, now weighs in with a massive rulebook. I played the older editions and stopped at Advanced Third Reich.

Andy has seen it in action at WBC - it actually draws a decent number of participants . They take basically the entire week to play the thing. At least they are able to finish it though. World in Flames is substantially longer, and like AWaW, has become bloated compared to its original incarnation.

I had no idea AWaW was basically the latest in the Third Reich family (even though the friggin' BGG page states precisely that in bold type). It was always more game than I was interested in or figured I'd ever play outside a convention setting.

Since you mention it, I might as well ask: Have you played BFN in any meaningful fashion Marty? I picked up a copy solely because it was a deal I couldn't pass up (the WBC auction or auction store for ~$30, I think--wherever it was I found it, it was dirt cheap) but haven't come close to punching the thing as of yet. Worth cracking open in advance of the expansion or should I stick to my current plan of finally getting The Killing Ground to the table?

I have not played BfN yet . While it is probably simpler than TKG, it has a much larger footprint and ostensibly, longer playing time.

Not that TKG is short mind you. I've played the campaign game and I'd say with team play ( 2 per side ) you're still looking at over an hour per turn and that's if you're playing at a decent clip. If you don't have the Overlord expansion, I'd highly recommend it - while it was originally intended as an expansion, it can also be played on its own ( in conjunction with counters and charts from TKG ) and makes an excellent single map game on the opening 30 days of the campaign in Normandy. The D Day landings by themselves are an interesting subgame, and are actually pretty straightforward, as many of the regular rules are not used on June 6. You can do June 6th in an evening/single sitting.

Just because you're discussing wargames doesn't mean you get to use Three Letter Acronyms for everything.

S.

So I was counting the counters in the copy of La Bataille de la Moskowa - Borodino: September, 1812 produced by Game Designer's Workshop in 1975 (there are 1436 if you're curious) when I scanned through the rule book and found the following paragraph in the Designer's Notes section which I think summarizes a large portion of the design philosophy of A World at War as well.

I quote Laurence A Groves:

"La Bataille de la Moskowa has been designed with realism as the primary goal. The question of playablity has always seemed to me to be an excuse for not having produced a more realistic style of play (maybe I'm too much of a fanatic). After all, if "wargamers" want playable games, they can easily find them in the children's game department."

There is so much fucked up with that statement I don't even know where to begin other than to say that unless the punishment for failure in your game is death....well it ain't got a whole lotta realism in it.

PS. It's for sale if you are intrigued

Remember that gamers who go for Napoleonics are the wargaming equivalent of Beatles, Dylan, Beach Boys, and Springsteen collectors. They're "gotta have every note EVAR" kind of people. They're truly nuts...