inconsequential ruminations

I visited Julian on Thursday to play miniatures. I never got into miniatures, simply because I don’t paint, but I’ll play with someone else’s toy soldiers, particularly if they paint well.

We played a game of The Bloody Borders, a super-simple skirmishing rules set from Wargames Illustrated about the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers of the 16th century.

• background
• rules
• campaign rules

We played two linked scenarios. In the first, my English village, populated by the Charltons, was attacked by Julian’s marauding Armstrongs trying to capture livestock. In the second, a posse of Charltons pursued the Armstrongs back towards the border.

Julian used 28mm plastic miniatures. As you can see from my poorly lit photo, they look great. He uses a fast varnish-dipping technique, which he says is considered a bit naff among the cognoscenti, but I think they look very nice. The bulls were adapted from wine bottles, which is why they look Spanish.

I like the free-wheeling, fast, casual nature of miniatures with Julian. It’s about seeing how a narrative unfolds, not about realism or winning.

Peter came over and destroyed me at Napoleon’s Triumph. It’s very difficult to grasp how to play well. I read the rules, but they didn’t help much when playing. Peter understood the basics, so cleaned up.

As many have said, Napoleon’s Triumph is a game that reinvents the wargame. Imagine Nightmare Stratego and maybe you’ll have an idea. I suspect I will not like it in the long run, as I like to relax while playing games, but I was very wrong about Age of Steam on my first play, so it will get another chance.

Before I play Peter again, I’m going to try to find the time to play the solitaire scenario with Vassal.

We had another go at the 10 round 1861 scenario and finished in 90 minutes. Again we had a great time and this time the Confederacy had it their way. It’s a fast playing and clever game. I don’t have any real desire to step up to a longer scenario yet.

We stuck with the Basic rules, but only used one optional rule – Novice Union. Next time we’ll play with the WBC scenario.

It was good to play with the map fixed by the stickers that arrived quickly from Phalanx Games. It’s great that they are still supporting this game, several years after publication and even to someone who bought the game second hand.

I did some research about the optimal scenario for A House Divided. I emailed Daniel Broh-Kahn, who ran two A House Divided tournaments at the World Boardgaming Championship.

Basically, the Advanced rules were used, with no optional rules, unless both players agreed.

There are three session reports at the WBC website:

• 1999
• 2000
• 2001

All the games were 10 turn scenarios.

The “rule of 7”, was used to minimise luck:

The sum of your marches die roll and your recruiting die roll in a month is always seven. As all scenarios start with a 1 for marches for both sides, things get bloody quickly.

In 1999 and 2000, they tried to follow the campaign game over the rounds – in other words, 1861 for the first round, 1862 in the second round, 1863 in the semis and 1864 in the final.

In 2001 they abandoned this in favour of the 1861 scenario throughout as it had proved the most balanced.

By 2001, there were concerns that the short scenario favoured the Confederates, as they can play suicidally on the last turn:

A possible addition to next year’s tournament would be a variable ending chit for the scenario, preventing the Confederate player from end-gaming the situation and picking up easy cities with no chance of retaliation, as the Confederate always has the last player turn. In this possible tournament addition, the Confederate player rolls to end the game on turn 9 (33% chance) then again on turn 10 (67% chance) and finally on turn 11 (100% chance).

I’ll give this ruleset a try, once we are up to trying the Advanced Rules.

I crossposted this to the Geek.

A House Divided is an excellent introductory wargame. It is still popular after 28 years, which says it all.

I went over to my b-i-l’s last night and we played the short 10-turn 1861 scenario using the basic rules. We played with all the pro-Union optional rules, to give Tully an advantage. He didn’t need them as he won comfortably.

The components are top-notch, however, we were a bit caught out by some map errors. Atlanta and New Orleans should be victory cities, but the map is printed wrongly and caused confusion. I hope Phalanx send me stickers for the board, otherwise I’ll print and stick the corrections myself.

People complain that the game is too simplistic, but Tully has not played any wargames other than Risk before and hates my monotone rules explanations, so it was perfect. It is also a flexible system, with two rules sets – Basic and Advanced, and many optional rules, with the impact on game balance shown. There are also different scenarios, for 10, 20, 30, 40 or more turns. It means you can customise the game for the situation. As we play more, we’ll ramp up the rules complexity.

Maybe if Mikko had tried a 20 turn scenario he would have enjoyed it more?

Hardcore Twilight Struggle fans will know this already, but there’s a new, free, print and play game that uses almost the same mechanics to depict the Democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989, called 1989: Dawn of Freedom.

Ted Torgerson is an interesting designer. He seems to be disinterested in professional games publishing, but just wants to do it as a hobby. I have come across a couple of his old games in the past:

• Free At Last – another card driven wargame, this time simulating the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Sharks and Jets – a “tactical combat game based on the musical West Side Story” – really.

There is a positive review at the Geek and all the materials required to play are available at Consimworld. Most importantly, it’s available for play at Wargameroom, so you can be sure it has had some tough playtesting.

I’ll have to muster the time and materials to assemble 1989 and give it a try.

Unhappy King Charles is an excellent wargame, full of flavour, depth and replayability. Disclaimer: I know Charles Vasey personally, and have a lot of respect for him, but this has not affected this post.

I have played Unhappy King Charles once over Vassal and three times face to face, but only managed to finish one of the face to face games. I did not want to comment sooner, as this is a deep game and I wanted to get a clear idea of it.

I knew very little about the English Civil War before I played Unhappy King Charles. Andy Daglish recommended Cromwell, the 1971 film about the English Civil War, starring Richard Harris, Alec Guinness and Timothy Dalton. It slips into a pseudo-Western at some points, but the acting is superb, with Richard Harris dominating the screen.

I will not summarise the game mechanics of Unhappy King Charles as the description at the BoardGameGeek is enough.

Comparison with other CDGs
Unhappy King Charles’ mechanics are based on We the People, but this game is significantly longer and more complicated. I have played a few card driven wargames and UKC is at a similar level to Shifting Sands and more complicated and longer than War of the Ring or Twilight Struggle. I found UKC a bit more complex than Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage, but the rules are much harder to get through – more below.
Length – six hours, but we are slow. I think we could get this down to five hours. Fast, experienced CDG players can get this down to three to four hours.

Rules
The rules were the only area where I really think the game could have been better, as they are verbose and hard to read. On the other hand they are very hard to misinterpret and we had almost no rules questions. This is always a tough balance, but they just did not work for my learning style. I considered putting together a concise summary, but real life has intervened. While we were on holiday, my wife read a novel of several hundred pages in almost exactly the same time it took me to parse these rules.

Hints

1. Read the rules first. I found the playbook tedious and it did not help my understanding much. I never usually read strategy guides, but do read Andy Daglish’s hints in the playbook. The learning curve is too great in this game otherwise.
2. Print Andy’s reference sheet – as it clears up some particularly unclear parts of the rules.
3. Don’t bother with the counter displays and use normal counter stacks. The counter density in this game is very low, so they are a waste of time.

Gameplay
There is no open front and Unhappy King Charles plays like a swirling WW1 dog-fight. It is the opposite of an Operation Market Garden game or a Battle of the Bulge game, where the gameplay is linear.
The way to win is to concentrate on the control markers and to try to isolate the opposition’s markers for removal.
Counter intuitively, it is usually best to disperse/evade if you are at a disadvantage, as the penalties are very light.

I don’t have room in my life for many games of this intensity and depth, but I am happy I made space for this one. 9/10