Opinions on a few wargames

Also what is the consensus on the Commands & Colors series? Its listed as a light wargame that gets a good deal of love from a broad spectrum of people.

I played the original C&C Ancients twice with maybe a 2 month break in between and just couldn't understand the love for the series honestly. I often felt frustrated that I wanted to move troops on one particular side of the battle but my cards prevented me from doing that and they just sat there while ranged units attacked. The next game I rammed my elephants into the enemy and they literally destroyed almost half of the banners I needed for a victory - it felt really cheap and had nothing to do with my own strategy but rather the dice rolls on rampaging elephants thrown into a group of enemies. Very unsatisfying in both plays but it was just 2 plays; maybe I'm missing something?

Attrition wrote: You look nothing like your avatar. Much more...alive. Suspicious.

That photo was taken before my opponent grew sick of my sweet die rolls and decided that enough was enough. My body still hasn't been found to this day.

Scott_F wrote: Also what is the consensus on the Commands & Colors series? Its listed as a light wargame that gets a good deal of love from a broad spectrum of people.

I'm with you 100% on this one, though that puts us in the grand minority on F:AT. I don't like any of the Borg series: Battle Cry, Memoir '44, C&C. There are tons of short, light wargames that I'd rather play instead. Manoeuvre, for starters.

Though I hear Memoir '44 gets much, much better with the expansions.
And some people love the "Epic" version of C&C - 3 players vs. 3 players - but that didn't do much for me.

I'll throw the Hold the Line series in ahead of C&C. Ancients is the best of the set, as you can battle back and the leaders give you some additional options. But it's much like the actual history it represents -- any illusion you have to control over your army is fleeting. Shit happens, have a clear escape route at all times.

I actually like C&C:Ancients. I just don't take it too seriously.

Scott_F wrote: I'm looking at pre WW1 2 player medium or light games yeah. Julius Caesar is on my short list too, forgot to mention that one as well. Block or CDG are what I'm most familiar with and know that I enjoy so far, which doesn't rule out other games. Also going for play time of 4 hours or less realistically.

I'd agree with everything Wkover said even if I was on the losing end against him on most of the games he mentioned. Hellenes was ok as a block game but I think Julius Caesar, Crusader Rex and Hammer of Scots are all better block games than Hellenes. For CDG, Hannibal is the best for pre-20th century.

i played a few games of Hellenes which is a good block game but probably not my favourite. Like most peloponnesian war games that are shooting for a historical approach the strategies whilst not entirely fixed are certainly skewed for each faction. Athens has to boost the number of actions it gets per turn and use its sea advantage, Sparta has to hit hard. There is plenty of good tactical room however. I played Hellenes after having played a lot of the Columbia block titles. It is different enough from the columbia games to feel fresh and interesting though I'd agree with the general concensus that the columbia games are probably both simpler and better, though they can get a bit samey after a while. I'd get just one of the columbia games and stick with it since they are all essentially the same idea.

If you didn't like the fundamental C&C system in Ancients you probably won't like the series at all. I've played the Samurai one, Napoleonic one and memoire, they are rather similar games.

+1 for Fading Glory, a simple napoleonic hex and counter i really like.

Polis is pretty good but very much more a euro game masquerading as a war game. The history is fairly tenuous but its a fun 2 player civ game and has a pretty board. It has the most pointless event card deck of any game i have ever played though.

C&C is really about building momentum while consolidating your forces. It can be played at casual level, but really shines at higher level of play.

For example, when I want to attack a flank, I wait until I get 3 cards on that flank. Until then, I consolidate my force with some jabs here and there. When I make an attack, I can lose momentum, when running out a card for a particular section. I may get additional cards and trying to push through. I can feint and lure an enemy by faking running out of cards. I can never be sure on my enemy's readiness to respond to the push of that particular flank.

Great game.

Sevej wrote: C&C is really about building momentum while consolidating your forces. It can be played at casual level, but really shines at higher level of play.

For example, when I want to attack a flank, I wait until I get 3 cards on that flank. Until then, I consolidate my force with some jabs here and there. When I make an attack, I can lose momentum, when running out a card for a particular section. I may get additional cards and trying to push through. I can feint and lure an enemy by faking running out of cards. I can never be sure on my enemy's readiness to respond to the push of that particular flank.

Great game.

You make this play out in the standard scenarios? What you're saying feels like eight or ten moves minimum to me, and in more than a few scenarios that exceeds the length of the game.

S.

Sagrilarus wrote:

Sevej wrote: C&C is really about building momentum while consolidating your forces. It can be played at casual level, but really shines at higher level of play.

For example, when I want to attack a flank, I wait until I get 3 cards on that flank. Until then, I consolidate my force with some jabs here and there. When I make an attack, I can lose momentum, when running out a card for a particular section. I may get additional cards and trying to push through. I can feint and lure an enemy by faking running out of cards. I can never be sure on my enemy's readiness to respond to the push of that particular flank.

Great game.

You make this play out in the standard scenarios? What you're saying feels like eight or ten moves minimum to me, and in more than a few scenarios that exceeds the length of the game.

S.

If Sevej is talking specifically about Ancients , considering just the base box, far as I can remember [and it's been a while], you'd be right. That said, between the expansions, officially-published magazine inserts (mostly c3i, but I think I've come across new "official" C&C:A scenarios in wargaming rags published in at least 4 languages so far), and the fan-mades, many pretty polished, there are approximately 4 billion C&C:A scenarios out there, including some of truly ridiculous size/scope.

If he's talking about the C&C system writ large, you can certainly lots lot of turns out of M44 and Napoleon I think [only played once so far]. I can't remember how many turns your average Battle Cry game would run as that's one I haven't broken out in eons.

(For those vaguely interested in the community support for the games: Battle Cry had far fewer official scenarios, but a similar sort of community push behind it to push out a pretty good pile of additional scenarios. C&C:Nappy is probably going to be close to Ancients on the fan-made side, anyway, as I think the C&C scenario-maker crowd includes some obsessive Napoleonic gamers [though, I'm not entirely sure there is any other sort of Nappy-head when you get down to it]. There is already a pretty decent-sized scenario repository, which is only going expand now that the bulk of the single-nation expansions have hit. As for Mem44, it has enough legs to have spawned a 400-page strategy guide published first in France and recently released in the US. There are some seriously, seriously dedicated M44 players in the hard of that mix )

I wish the Japanese title that Zveda publishes had 10% the sort of community push the US-published games get as I really like gaming Feudal Japan. This is one I'd like to get to the table waaaay more often, but, if there's a call for C&C among my gang, it tends to run to M44 or Ancients. But I keep holding out hope...

To the OP: Sorry for the derailment. I'm a fan of the C&C system in general, though I understand the frustrations with Ancients. It's probably the most constrained (straight-jacketed more like) of any game in the system. Conversely I utterly *loathe* Columbia' s A-B-C (aka "Hammer of the Scots") historical block games. To me, the system is facile and the gameplay kind of dull, though I'll break out Wizard Kings if someone is just dying to play this style of game. If I would pick one Columbia game to keep, it's Rommel in the Desert. The games just seemed to have more tension and heft than anything I experienced when playing HOTS or Richard III.(both huge favorites of a local opponent and I won't turn down my host's choice of games, regardless of how I feel about it.

Sagrilarus wrote:

Sevej wrote: C&C is really about building momentum while consolidating your forces. It can be played at casual level, but really shines at higher level of play.

For example, when I want to attack a flank, I wait until I get 3 cards on that flank. Until then, I consolidate my force with some jabs here and there. When I make an attack, I can lose momentum, when running out a card for a particular section. I may get additional cards and trying to push through. I can feint and lure an enemy by faking running out of cards. I can never be sure on my enemy's readiness to respond to the push of that particular flank.

Great game.

You make this play out in the standard scenarios? What you're saying feels like eight or ten moves minimum to me, and in more than a few scenarios that exceeds the length of the game.

S.

Actually, I was coming from BattleLore. And yes, standard games. It doesn't take eight or ten moves, more like four to six moves. At first plays our games were short. We're just charging forward. Later we were getting more conservative. Consolidating force in support formation, and slowly creeping forward, while ensuring either of us has enough cards to carry the push. I just got a 2nd base set, can't wait playing Epic!!!

Even now, when considering most other tactical games, they're kind of... boring. You come forward, shoot the enemy's units, and next turn they shoot back. That's so common in other games, that it practically feels dead to me. In BattleLore, you can never be sure (and I'm not talking about the battleback).

Sevej wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote:

Sevej wrote: C&C is really about building momentum while consolidating your forces. It can be played at casual level, but really shines at higher level of play.

For example, when I want to attack a flank, I wait until I get 3 cards on that flank. Until then, I consolidate my force with some jabs here and there. When I make an attack, I can lose momentum, when running out a card for a particular section. I may get additional cards and trying to push through. I can feint and lure an enemy by faking running out of cards. I can never be sure on my enemy's readiness to respond to the push of that particular flank.

Great game.

You make this play out in the standard scenarios? What you're saying feels like eight or ten moves minimum to me, and in more than a few scenarios that exceeds the length of the game.

S.

Actually, I was coming from BattleLore. And yes, standard games. It doesn't take eight or ten moves, more like four to six moves. At first plays our games were short. We're just charging forward. Later we were getting more conservative. Consolidating force in support formation, and slowly creeping forward, while ensuring either of us has enough cards to carry the push. I just got a 2nd base set, can't wait playing Epic!!!

Even now, when considering most other tactical games, they're kind of... boring. You come forward, shoot the enemy's units, and next turn they shoot back. That's so common in other games, that it practically feels dead to me. In BattleLore, you can never be sure (and I'm not talking about the battleback).

Oh yea, Battlelore...forgot about that one...

Thanks for the input on this one. Ended up doing a bunch of things here so hopefully my foray into these games sticks. At the least I can ogle the maps.

Out
Belfort & Expansion
Lancaster Henry V expansion

In
Hannibal RvC
Prussia's Defiant Stand


Bought
Sword of Rome
Julius Caesar
Kingdom of Heaven

Now I need plexiglass or something for the paper map(s)...
I need to pace myself somewhat, so Napoleonic Wars, Holdfast: Korea, and Warriors of God will have to wait a couple months.

Fighting the good fight. Bumping old threads back to front of recent topics page to drive off spam

Since we're bumping threads (anyone know where I can watch movies online for free?), this seems like as good a time as any to ask. I'm interested in two game systems and wanted to get feedback on both (this won't necessarily be an either/or situation).

The first system is Butterfield's solo D-Day series (Omaha Beach and Tarawa out now, Peleliu coming soon). Every time I saw this before, I was always put off by all the extra dots and markings on the map. However, after watching a video on the game, the AI system seems fairly intuitive and easy to operate. Does anyone have any experience with either of these? Which is the better game at this point -- Omaha or Tarawa? I'm interested in picking one of these up sometime in the next few months. Grab Tarawa while it's still available? Wait for the reprint of Omaha Beach? Screw both of those and wait for Peleliu?

The other system is Berg's Men of Iron series, specifically Infidel. For some reason I've taken a slight interest in pre-gunpowder battles, and this seemed like a good choice for solo play/exploration. I actually picked up a copy of Infidel from my FLGS a few days ago since it's now OOP and looks to be staying that way (GMT removed the reprint from the P500 list recently). So do I open it and play it or hang onto it as trade bait? Pros/cons of the system? I need to research this one a little more personally, but since it's already sitting on my shelf, let's hear those thoughts.

D-day at Omaha Beach is one of the best solo games I've played. I agree that map is damn ugly...until you understand what those dots mean and how the game play. Then you'll think they are brilliant. It is a challenge and pretty simple to learn. Once you've got the hang of it, it flows really well allowing for a great deal of immersion. I have not played the other iteration so can't comment on it but trust me, the original is well worth it.

The Men of Iron series while not technically a solo game isn't really a competitive one either. It tells you point blank in the rules that the scenarios are unbalanced and one side, the defense, usually has little interesting to do. To me that means it's more of an exercise or a game that should be soloed.