Spotlight on Games
>
1001 Nights of Military Gaming
- W -
- Wallenstein
Dirk Henn light war game on the Thirty Years War is actually a
German publication (by Queen), the warlike attacks resolved
by dropping wooden cubes in a "dice tower". Historicity is
limited to a more or less correct map of Europe and each player
taking forces in the name of one of the famous generals of the
period. Initial map holdings are either pre-programmed without
respect to history or done by a drafting mechanism. The most
interesting feature is the ordering and allocation of player
actions. There are ten different sorts, e.g. attack, harvest,
tax, reinforce, construct, etc. Their order is random, and
half known in advance. Then players use their province cards to
secretly decide which province will do each. Depending on what
is known, especially the timing of attacks, and how much the
players are trying to accomplish, this can make for interesting
bits of planning. Often the randomness upsets the best plan,
however. Another troubling random element is delivered via the
tower, in which many of one's cubes may get stuck, sometimes
leading to incredible battle upsets, or even worse, exact ties
which mean that not only is the province vacated, it loses all
of its buildings, which is greatly to the benefit of those
uninvolved. Then, even more strangely, those missing cubes
will fall out of the tower later and show up in a completely
unrelated part of the board. This is not totally weird for the
setting as the heavy use of mercenaries during the period did see
troops move about quite a bit, even between sides, but whether
this much randomness is good for playability and planning is
highly questionable. Actually, the theme might have worked even
better in the Japan of the shoguns where secret troop transfers
played an even greater role. There are admirably novel ideas,
but there may also be too much chaos for some master strategists
and too much length (set aside two hours) for others. Speaking
of length, there are a lot more event cards than necessary; was
it the original intent to play out the entire thirty years of
the war? Strategically, realize that buildings play a greater
role in victory than does combat, and that the mere taking of
provinces willy-nilly will mostly just earn famine revolts. On the
first round, players should try to expand into lightly-defended
regions which offer high monetary and grain values, particularly
if they have started without any region having at least six tax
and five grain. They should consider not buying all the available
reinforcements, especially the small one, but use the money to buy
buildings in heavily defended areas. Future turns should be spent
in careful study of potential buildings points earnings and the
minimum required to enhance them. As in any game in which players
can more-or-less freely attack one another, it's a good idea not
to appear to be winning. Regarding the title, Wallenstein was the
general in the employ of Austria so successful that he looked to
be creating a kingdom of his own before his mysterious, untimely
demise. [background]
Dirk Henn
- War Galley
Operational war game depicting naval battles during the Classical Greek
and Roman periods. Most of the interest will be from Classical history
fans and stems from the backgrounds given with the
scenarios. As a game, there do not seem to be many different
strategic approaches available and much of the game is more like
riding along with events with a tactical decision or two along
the way. The theme is stretched in ways one doesn't want to
think about when the rules say things like "each ship counter
actually represents four individual ships." Consequently, if one
ship catches fire, all four are considered to have so done.
The command and control rules are good insofar as they exist,
but do not in reality seem to add much interest or difficult
decisionmaking to the proceedings.
[summary]
[movement]
[notes]
[background]
[scenarios]
- Warlord Game
Obscure war game set in an ill-defined medieval era and place.
Almost a classical empire-building setup in which players start
out fairly spread out and try to conquer neutral neighbors
as efficiently as possible before trying to take out their opponents.
Very susceptible to kingmaking situations without much chrome of the era.
- Warlords - China in disarray, 1927-1945
Diplomatic war game for up to seven. The influence of
Diplomacy
and its area movement and combat is plain. This basic system is supplemented
by events (including non-player revolts), initiative and supply systems.
Each faction has some special ability as well and combat includes dice.
Players keep track of their statuses in secret on paper and the game depends
on no errors being made, whether intentional or unintentional.
Four different historical scenarios are included, some of which seem
unbalanced as well as limited in strategy, but in any case, negotiation rules.
- Warp War
Two player tactical space war game (microgame)
based on the novels
The Forever War
by Joe Haldeman and
The Mote in God's Eye
by Jerry Pournelle
and Larry Niven. Fairly extensible system included two types of ships
with a considerable number of attributes including power,
warp, beams, screens, missiles and racks for carrying system
ships. Advanced rules feature technology levels, but perhaps the
most interesting, if time-consuming feature is the diceless combat
realized via simultaneously-revealed written orders orders which
include a lot of possibility for bluff and outguessing. Might
make a nice basis for a space campaign game.
- Warrior Knights
War game set in a nonspecific medieval fantasy world depicted
on a nice-looking 6x6 grid map. Players represent barons
trying to control more than half the board's cities. Included
are income, fate cards, movement, combat and assembly.
Many players will be reminded of Kingmaker which was apparently an inspiration.
There is plenty of chaos, particularly in the event cards,
as well as the possibility for negotiation (and kingmaking).
[summary]
- Waterloo [Treefrog]
The 1815 battle between Napoleon and Wellington and his allied
forces at Waterloo may well be the most frequently simulated
ever. This version features an area map and largish wooden
pieces in the shapes of soldiers, horse riders and artillery
pieces. There are three shades of blue for the French, red for
the British, black and gray for the Prussians, orange for the
Dutch and green for other allies. These are mentioned up front
as they may well the source of much interest for this
product's potential market. Another may be a novel method for
determining how much a player may do in a turn. The opponent
draws from a bag a wooden chit numbered from 2-5 (there are
two instances of each). This is the number of actions the
current player may perform, but which is not discovered until
the quota has been filled. Actions are
things like moving a force, moving to attack, firing
artillery, re-grouping, reinforcement, etc. Each type of
action requires expenditure of a disk in a particular one
of three colors, these disks being allocated at
the start of each turn. The France player receives a large
amount, but the Allies only a few, more arriving with the
Prussian forces around turn four. These ideas can make for good
dilemmas, especially not knowing when the turn will end. Do
you have time to make that attack and then re-group? Is it
more important to fix your over-stacked areas or shore up a
defense? Etc. On the surprising side is the rather involved
sequence of seven steps needed resolve each combat.
There is the defensive artillery phase, the cavalry vs.
cavalry phase, the infantry vs. infantry phase, the cavalry
vs. infantry phase, etc. all the way to the involuntary
charge of successful cavalry phase. Some of these phases work
fairly simply, e.g. roll a die for each firing unit and
succeed on a 6, but at their heart they are very complicated
with half a dozen modifiers needing checking for the attack
table rolls and then nearly a dozen for the morale table
should any hit be achieved. One never really gets accustomed to what
these are and so these same tables must be checked again and
again. Damage on infantry is taken in the form of cubes, six
of them destroying a unit. These cubes can also be transferred
to other friendlies in a nicely simple implementation of
bringing in fresh forces. Cavalry has only two damage levels,
being made to lie down when "tired" and then destroyed if hit
again. Captured artillery is simply removed. There are leaders
which enable moving units from more than one region at once,
but have no other effect other than to be counted as a loss
for victory point purposes. If no player achieves the
necessary level of destruction, victory goes to the one
reaching the town at the other's rear lines. Napoleon and
Wellington do not appear on the board as such. Tactically,
players will realize that strong points are difficult to
take and the special skirmishing rules a good way to reduce
them. Artillery tends to be weak and the best attacks employ a
combination of horse and infantry. The randomness
in the action allocations and dice results mean this isn't
anywhere near a simulation and wildly skewed results are
possible – in one playing the French won
before the Prussians had even arrived. So it's puzzling that
the players are belabored with such a complicated
combat resolution system. It's as if the game can't decide what it
really wants to be – maybe originally it was thought of
as sort of a vehicle to play a game with one's miniature
soldiers – and ends up unlikely to fully satisfy anyone.
The later Gettysburg from the same publisher is called
a sister game to this.
MMHM5 (Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 5)
Martin Wallace;
Treefrog Games-2009; 2; 180
[Shop]
- Way Out West
Game on the settlement of the Wild West by
Britons Martin Wallace and Warfrog. Although the
more-professionally-presented-than-in-previous-years outing
poses as a nice, innocent society game, digging under its
Western hardpan reveals a war game, albeit somewhat abstracted,
as cowboys ride around and shoot up the landscape, scarcely
noticing the pusillanimous sheriffs. Nice features are
the clever handling of the sequence of play which tends
to drive the first player to be last, the restricted
action choices and the interaction of the tiles in the
cities. It is only unfortunate that shot dead is one of the
Kramer principles, i.e. the rules permitting unfettered and
unending attacks on a single player which can relatively easily
drive him from any chance of victory. Thus, probably only of
interest to the "V for Violence" set. With such nice systems,
a better rudder is wished for future efforts. A summary card
detailing the intricate payouts and victory point awards is
sorely needed.
Martin Wallace
- Wilson's Creek
One of the Blue and Grey American Civil War magazine war games
that SPI used to turn out regularly. This one features one of
the earliest battles, Lyon vs. Price in Missouri. Basically an
average entry in the system leavened by a special factor. In the
battle, Lyon had sent his lieutenant Siegel to travel around to
the enemy rear and attack at a crucial moment. In the game the
players do not know for sure when Siegel will arrive and thus
must practice risk management against that event.
- Wings of War: Famous Aces
Multiplayer game of World War I air combat. The topic,
at least at the dogfighting level, has been treated
quite a few times over the years – going back to Richthofen's War – but
this mostly cards cage is one of the simplest yet, save Aces of Aces, which only offers a
one-dimensional view. This one is playable on any flat surface –
like a miniatures games – and thus offers two dimensions. The
third altitude is avoided by prohibiting planes from firing or
crashing when their cards overlap. There is a nice feeling of
programming as players allocate three of their movement cards
each round. It might be even smoother if these cards were
viewable from a stand a new one were added every round. The
other thing the cards do is elegantly abstract away most of the
annoying details of plane performance. If a plane is really good
at turning it gets more turn cards. These cards are placed just
ahead of a plane's position and then the plane is placed ahead
of the position shown on the maneuver card. This allows some
planes to turn ever so slightly more tightly than others or to
fly faster than others, to such a small degree that it could
never be reflected on a hex map. In this way one gets the feeling
of facing a situation more true to that of the actual pilots. So
players are less often thinking thoughts like "how many hexes away
will I be?" than "which direction to I go to maximize my safety
and chances to fire?" There is support for the Immelman maneuver
and restrictions on impossible sequences of maneuvers, which is
only a bit fiddly. There is an expansion game – Wings of War:
Watch Your Back! – offering more planes as well. It seems
the system could also be adapted for World War II aircraft. One
questionable decision is the use of card drawing for damage
resolution. This just seems much less dramatic than the rat-a-tat
of falling dice, but a variant would be easy to devise. The main
problem, of course, is that this is an elimination game and some
will be out of it before it's over. A variant that ends the game
when the first flier falls and awards victory to the pilot who
has scored the most hits would address this. This product shows
the typical Italian attention to the aesthetic and shoudl be
quite satisfying to any fan of the genre as well as anyone who
doesn't mind a quick elimination contest requiring
plenty of intuition.
- Witch Trial
Players represent lawyers in a "make the most money" game set in the Salem
witch trials. A turn consists of either (1) drafting a Charge, Suspect, Evidence
or Motion card according to a cost schedule similar to
Vinci
(actually it probably originated with
Premiere),
(2) matching a Charge to a Suspect to create a case or (3) defending the case.
As the fee for defense is as negligible as the chance of its success, the latter is
almost never done except in late game desperation. Instead a public defender
is chosen at random, someone who will also save his cards for a lucrative prosecution.
Thus the winner should be the person who is luckiest at drawing the cards he needs
and in making the few dice rolls that determine the outcome of his cases. Sporting
a large variety of humorous cards, really this is a closet party game meant to be
played dramatically and for laughs, but when one
considers that the outcome of many of these horrible trials was death, one requiring
a sense of humor rather macabre to say the least. The prosecution rests.
Made news in the Internet world
when designer James Ernest had a trial of sorts himself at a
pagan website.
- Wiz War
Light war game in which up to six wizards try to gather three enemy
treasures and/or kill their opponents. The board is formed from the
joining of a series of square mazes with rules by which one may
"magically" move off one end of the board and on to another. Heart
of the game is a very wide variety of cards which have very disparate
effects. Luck of the draw is most of the game, but the effects can
be quite humorous, although sometimes problematic if a combination
arises that the designers have not yet considered. This is a problem
shared with games like
Talisman
and
Cosmic Encounter.
[Jolly Games]
- Wizard [Metagaming]
War game about wizards battling one another in an arena.
The magical half of
Melee
is a generally clean
spell system that works well, although a bit limited
after multiple playings. Later expanded in Advanced Wizard,
one of the components of the RPG
The Fantasy Trip.
- Wizard's Quest
War game in a fantasy setting is reminiscent of
Risk.
Additional features include terrain considerations, sorcerors
and heroes. There is not a great deal of decisionmaking, but
probably a reasonable introduction to war games.
[analysis]
- Wooden Ships & Iron Men
War game about tactical naval combat during the Napoleonic and
neighboring ages. Fairly nice system for resolving some of the
famous combats in detail. Some of the scenarios are huge and
really require teams and many hours to complete. There is quite a
lot of dice rolling involved. Sometimes given the joke sobriquet
"Wooden Quips & Iron Puns."
- World in Flames
Probably the best and most comprehensive war game treatment of
World War II. Borrowing directly the production system of
Global War,
it does a very good job of incorporating all the interesting history
of the war on a worldwide map with, in general, a rather elegant system
for doing so. The game is especially to be congratulated in
being willing to consider unorthodox strategies not pursued in
the historical conflict.
Optional rules which permit more chrome are fun, but also problematic in
that all combinations are practically impossible to playtest and because
players must discuss extensively which to include. The myriad expansion
kits feature the same unfortunate difficulty. The result is a rules set
that is never stabilized and sometimes players feel that
they have earned a degree in "World in Flames 101". The only
semi-serious complaint about the system is that it is a better
simulator of land and air conflict than of naval which often
features unrealistic oddities, from the ways that oceans have
been partitioned to the behavior of naval aircraft.
- World War One
Probably the most compact simulation of the European part
of the first World War ever published. Some of the smaller countries
are represented by just a few hexes. The entire game actually centers
around using up enemy resource points and most combat results are as
boring since each side tends to lose the same amount in what ends
up being a careful accountant's exercise with little to no flavor.
On to X
- Main
Please forward any comments and additions for this site to
Rick Heli.
