What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

wkover wrote: The game is nowhere near as good as 1812 or 1775, in my opinion.

I think the designer would be pleased to hear you mention his game and those in the same sentence. 1812 and 1775 are stiff competition for anyone in the business.

1775: Rebellion is the first game I've been truly excited about getting since last year. I realize a lot of good titles have come out in 2014, but none of them have really grabbed me personally until I saw 1775 last month.

S.

Played What Price Glory, the magazine game of the Western Front of WW1 put out by MMP and using the same system as Storm Over Stalingrad.

I liked it. Only 7 pages of rules but a lot of tough choices. I liked having a deck of cards but choosing which ones you would have in your hand for the turn. I thought the choice between using a bunch of cards for one big push and then being spent for the rest of the turn or doing a bunch of smaller but less decisive actions was often very difficult to make.

There are event cards too that can be quite powerful and yet maintain the feel and theme of the fight.

And it all took about 3 hours start to finish. the Great War in an evening or afternoon. That's pretty cool.

PS: King Put lost and thus will be paying me war reparations for years to come.

repoman wrote: PS: King Put lost and thus will be paying me war reparations for years to come.

With worthless currency.

You guys played in person?

Yah, he's here so his daughter can hang with Grand Ma and Pa before he brings her to Providence for freshman year at Johnson and Wales.

I've gotten one play in on my copy. It needs another. It may be worth going after a Vassal game.

S.

Sagrilarus wrote:

repoman wrote: PS: King Put lost and thus will be paying me war reparations for years to come.

With worthless currency.

You guys played in person?

War reparation will only lead to the Great Depression, hyper inflation, Hitler and WW2. What Price Glory would be a good live Vaasal game.

I don't play many wargames but I really like What Price Glory?. If it had more scenarios or something it would be a good boxed game; as it is it was way more than I expected from a magazine game.

I really want a rematch of What Price of Glory. I've been thinking about how I screwed up the first turn playing the Storm over Stalingrad rules. Sign of a great game is that you're still thinking about it a couple of days later.

It was due to have two additional pieces, Eastern Front and Atlantic. I played the Eastern Front piece years back at Winter Offensive, every bit as good.

Unfortunately it didn't preorder well so it went into Ops instead.

S.

Traveled down to The Nemesis' house today and brought along No Question of Surrender. This game is the baby brother of Devil's Cauldron and Where Eagles dare. When I say that I mean that it is a GTS (Grand Tactical System) game with only one map and not four or more like it's siblings.

The battle represented is the siege of Bir Hakeim in the Libyan deserts of WW2.

A large force of Germans and Italians were trying to take the oasis fort of Bir Hakeim from a much smaller force of the Free French. It's a classic tale of a small David heroically holding off a giant Goliath. Although the French are destined to lose, real victory lies in holding out long enough to make a difference. In this case about a week.

I've been trying to get The Nemesis to learn the GTS system but I understand the Devil's Cauldron can be quite intimidating. The smaller scale seemed more conducive to teaching and learning.

We played for about six hours and completed the first day of the full scenario. Which proves that even though the scope of the game is smaller, the time investment is quite considerable.

I think in it's primary goal, the game worked out fine. I think The Nemesis has a good grasp on the system now and even though DC has quite a few special rules, with the basics under his belt, he will have an easy time figuring them out.

As to whether the game succeeds as a whole, I think it's wanting a little bit. The main problem is the battle itself which is a "Defend the Castle" thing where the French have little ability to maneuver and outside of choosing which units to fire at when they are very restricted in terms of viable strategy. The Axis have a few more things to do to keep it interesting. They can try to encircle the fort or charge right in or delay some units so as to draw the French to one wall and then pounce from the ill defended side, etc.

Probably a good game to solo.

I am even more impressed with how important and deadly artillery is in this system. Mortars and guns can be devastating to units that are bunched up or traveling in column. Few war games that I have played seem to give artillery it's due but this is not one of them.