The best movie involving ninjas ever:

I've played both Samurai Swords and Wallenstein and until last week owned both - but Wallenstein has just flown with Royal Mail across to a new owner in Denmark as I was not really going to get a chance to play it, and have played it only once in 6 years.

Samurai Swords has all the DoaM war game bits we all like, nice but simple battle rules, bit of bidding to mix things up, the general's experience mod, and various units with slightly different abilities. I voted for Fortress America in it's first showing in the Dome but that was quite close.

Wallenstein is a very fine medium heavy euro wargame, but in the end that is what tips it Samurai Swords way - it is a medium heavy euro wargame and just not stack up in fun and satifaction for me in comparison. And someone please tell those eurotards that the cube tower is just an 'elegant' dice replacement.

Vote: Samurai Swords (although my box has Shogun on the lid !)

I'd like to see an article from you sometime on older AT games that you don't think have been made obsolete by newer stuff.

I wrote one last year, I think it was called "Obsolecence". It's around here, somewhere.

Not all old games have gone obsolete at all, but I do think that the standard A&A template DoaM game _has_. The games I've declared obsolete tend to be the mid-80s DoaM games, because I think they are past their prime- not because of Eurogames, but because modern AT games have rendered them old fashioned. NEXUS OPS and A&A have a lot of fundamental similarities but one is modernized, streamlined, and provides a hell of a lot of game and the other is old, clunky, and played out. Then there's TI3, which takes the template and makes it much richer thematically and much more expansive in terms of possibilities and options. A game of SAMURAI SWORDS is about as long as a game of TI3...so which one do you play? The old, fairly abstract one with a ninja piece that is pretty much a territory-swapping game or do you play the one that has politics, trade, economics, technology, and many more facets? Sure, sometimes you want one but not the other but at the end of the day the fact that something like TI3 is on the table at every game convention or gathering and SAMURAI SWORDS isn't says something. It doesn't have to do with "Cult of the New" or anything like that, it's that the older game has fallen into obsolescene even with its target audience.

With this Trashdome, the point is that we've got an old favorite, one of the canonical AT games that some of us have a good memory of, versus a more contemporary Eurogame. And we're sort of looking at them as competitors when really they're extremely different kinds of games. There's nothing "hybrid" or "Weuro" or whatever about it, SHOGUN/WALLENSTEIN is a Eurogame, plain and simple. And yeah, I'll take a great Eurogame over a game that I've recently played and found to be outdated and boring any day.

I bought WALLENSTEIN years ago...I still bring it out from time to time (usually as SHOGUN), and we always have a good time with it. I think it's got legs. But would it win in Trashdome versus STARCRAFT, TI3, NEXUS OPS, or even VIKTORY II? No way.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Fuck being eligible to compete against AT Tier 1 games - it's going to get its arse kicked by one of your 'past its use by date' AT legends.


Where did you learn your maths young Mikey - where I did taught me that 4-5 hrs is around half that of 8hrs.

Really? Are you still playing 8 hour TI3 games? Play with Will Kenyon and his crew and you're in and out in 5 hours tops. Play with the accelerated setup and you can do it under 4.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Presenting "Mikey Barnes" - the new euro pin-up boy for short (or shortening) games !

Are you allowed to talk/banter/shit-talk, or is that too inefficient and the game has to be played in a whispered (but time saving) hush ? :-p

Played each game once, and even though I'm evidently on the losing side in this trashdome, the one game I felt like buying (though I didn't) after my game was Shogun/Wallenstein. There are enough other good DoaM games out there not to go out looking for a 20 year OOP one.
So yeah, flay me with the handful of others who voted for the euro.

VOTE: SHOGUN

Its got everything to do with the "Cult of the New"

Let's face you dont have the attention span to play these boardgames.

These game are not obsolete just because you say so.

You remind me of a little kid that needs a constant conveyor belt of new toys to amuse himself.

Let's face it, Barnes has become a jaded gamer.

Time to give up the games for a while Michael and go out and shoot some hoops.

Samurai Swords

I refuse to call it Samurai Swords, it's Shogun dammit! The Euro with the same name that's beloved of T.O.S.sers everywhere didn't even have the originality to come up with a different name.

Vote: the MB Gamemaster series Shogun.