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- Wallenstein
Dirk Henn light wargame 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]
- War Galley
Operational wargame 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." 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 wargame 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 wargame 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 wargame (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
Wargame 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]
- 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 wargame, 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.
- Wilson's Creek
One of the Blue and Grey American Civil War magazine wargames 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 wargame 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]
Wargame 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
Wargame 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 wargames.
[analysis]
- Wooden Ships & Iron Men
Wargame 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 wargame 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 as each side tends to lose the same amount in what ends up being
a careful accountant's exercise with little to no flavor.
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Please forward any comments and additions for this site to
Rick Heli.