November Gaming: A House Divided

Not a huge amount of gaming happened in November; real life and whatnot.  I did manage a couple of games in at the club though, the first of which was A House Divided, a board game by Frank Chadwick.  I can't remember the current publisher, but this is apparently the fourth edition of the game.

AHD is a strategic wargame, re-fighting the American Civil War in it's entirety (and beyond if you prefer.) The game board consists of a network of strategic locations, either cities, towns or forts, with a web of roads, rivers and railway lines connecting them.  The game plays out in month long spring summer turns and two month autumn winter turns.

April 1862, look at all those blue tokens, must be going well for the Union.

Each turn, a player has a specific amount of activations he can make, moving or entrenching units, initiating battles and so on.  The movement mechanics are nice and simple, reflecting the importance of rail and river travel (particularly for the Union player in the latter case.)  The fact you can't move a whole lot of units in one turn, unless they are all stacked together as an army, means you can't redeploy strategically very quickly; you have to plan what you're going to do and build towards that carefully.

Combat is an extremely straightforward affair, purely dice based, with two hits needed to eliminate a token. There are still a number of tactical options for each side, with options to reinforce or retreat from the combat or to entrench a position.  After each successful combat, the victor can promote one of his units to a higher quality, from militia to veteran or from veteran to crack.  A slight niggle here is that for each battle, you pick all the involved units off the board and line them up separately, this kind of grated on me for a while, but I can't think of a better way it could be implemented.

The sideboard, tokens and battle area.  Exciting stuff!

The token count has been very specifically balanced to reflect the disparity in manpower between the two sides.  As a result the Confederate player has to be aggressive to promote his units to a higher quality, thereby making the lower quality token available for recruitment. On the other hand, the Union player automatically drafts new militia units every April, in addition to those he can recruit during the year.

Play alternates between the two players for the five years of the war until one side emerges victorious.  The Union win by either capturing Richmond or enough other bases to force a win (actually I think I'm forgetting one here.)  The Confederacy win by either capturing Washington or by simply avoiding defeat until May 1865.

We chose to play one of the year scenarios, as time was a bit limited, opting for 1862. Deployment was fixed with heavy concentrations around Washington and Richmond, the Union holding Kentucky and with a small force entrenched in Fort Monroe.  Victory and defeat for this scenario is calculated in the difference between the maximum possible army sizes for each side, calculated by the number of large cities each side controls - essentially this means "how much ground can the confederates take?"  Alternatively, if either side lost their capital, the game would be over too.

For some reason, I took a picture of the rulebook too.

I took the role as the Union commander, keeping my capital swarming with troops while simultaneously building up forces for a naval expedition down the coast (Will it worked for McClellan, didn't it?)  For the hell of it, we also had a push down from Kentucky against what looked like weak opposition.

Adam had the Confederate command and played a much more cagey game in the early turns. All the Confederate militia tokens were on the map, so the only way they could recruit new troops was to promote some milita to veterans, freeing up the militia tokens for the recruitment phase.  Adam did this by harrassing some of my isolated units and forming up to resist my Western push.

My push soon turned into a rout.  With no choice to retreat in the face of much better troops than my own, I launched the naval expedition, taking a couple towns, but not doing nearly enough to avoid the complete defeat I suffered.  This continued the fine tradition I have at the club of introducing new games and then losing heavily at them.

March 1863.  Errr, how did that happen?  And where the fuck have all my guys gone!?!

The box comes with two sets of rules, basic and advanced rules.  The former, beyond learning the basic mechanics really have no depth to them.  The advanced set are a little more meaty, but not complex at all (particularly by the standards of a GMT game.)  The second half of the advanced rules section cover the optional rules players can choose to use (in part or all of them, there are about twenty five or so to select.)  I'm not a big fan of this kind of choice in a game, it makes me think the designers couldn't decide what to include, so put everything in and make the players decide.

As AHD is in it's fourth edition, I think this is a nice nod to the previous incarnations of the game and, with a handy chart to help you, picking what rules you want is pretty straightforward.  There is a huge amount to choose from; I won't go into them all, but some of my favourites are the draft riots 1863,naval assaults and the Grant/Lee rules.  Additionally, there are rules for hypothetical situations like a Confederate navy or European recognition of the Confederacy and subsequent military aid.

I have to say I think A House Divided is an outstanding game.  Well balanced and atmospheric, it was also really fun, despite my horrendous loss.  The year we played took about ninety minutes, although with some fannying about going on;  we're both keen to arrange an afternoon or evening where we can play the whole war through to a finish.  A final point, this game cost me a tenner, from IGUK earlier this year.  The price was heavily reduced, but this is easily the best value purchase I've made all year.  Recommended.

Blood Bowl Team Manager

We didn't have anything definite arranged at the club this week, so I took along Blood Bowl Team Manager for a trial run.  This is one of Fantasy Flight's Games Workshop licensed games, based on the classic fantasy American football tabletop game.

Each player takes control of one of six teams for the course of a season, draws players, drafts star players, recruits coaching and backroom staff and participates in each game week.  It's quite an odd affair, especially considering the original game; players don't complete individual matches.  Instead, each turn consists of the players drawing a highlights reel - a row of cards with different combinations of rewards - representing something like a a sports summary television show like Match of the Day or NFL Gameday.  Individual player cards are placed next to a highlight in an effort to collect the reward on that card.

Essentially, you're getting a snapshot of what happened over a course of series of games, not winning and losing specific matches.  The aim of the game is also a little left of centre; instead of accruing the most points or "winning" most game weeks, the aim is to accumulate the most fans.  Not a problem in the game (in fact, the fan mechanic is handled very well,) but these two factors make Blood Bowl Team Manager a little counter-intuitive.

Still, once you've got your head around the unorthodox set up and premise, quite an entertaining little game unfolds. BBTM plays pretty quickly and, as every player regularly acquires new cards to use, there is very little down time in the game.  There are a nice mix of mechanics in the game; most cards have optional abilities to use, tackling uses dice, cheating needs a risk/reward decision, star players are (unsurprisingly) powerful.  Even the scoring system gives you some interesting choices to make; do you take the fans to get an early lead, or do you forgo fans to try and recruit better players or coaching staff.

Six teams are available to choose from in the base game, all from the Warhamer world; humans, dwarves, wood elves, orcs, skaven and chaos.  FFG have done a great job in differentiating between the different teams, the Skaven for instance, sneaky and underhand, make heavy use the cheating mechanic, the Orcs favour bludgeoning their opponents while the humans, who can do a bit of everything, are simultaneously great at nothing!

FFG say this game is for 2-4 players, but we realised very quickly that the two player experience is very disappointing.  Simply put, there's only one real tactic for both players in a two player game and once one player gets ahead, it's nigh on impossible for the other player to catch up.  However, I've no doubt that in a three or four player game, neither of these issues would be a problem.

Overall, Blood Bowl Team Manager is a decent enough game, one I really want to like, but would need to play a larger game to make sure.  The game itself is full of Blood Bowl humour and flavour; two commentators appear and have witty banter printed on many of the cards and the artwork overall is excellent.

I picked up the base game and the expansion well below the RRP.  I can't say I would pay full price for them, but if you get a cheap enough copy and enjoy multi-player board or card games, Blood Bowl Team Manager is a pretty good deal.

Pavia: Climax of the Italian Wars

After trying out an unusual, for me, game in Nuklear Winter '68 recently, I wanted to try out something similar.  To be honest, I've always been slightly snooty about some kinds of board games, all those token/card driven, hex-maps, tables and charts kind of turned me off them, despite never actually playing one.  Nuklear Winter was something I never would have considered buying myself, so it was a bit of an eye-opener to find out how enjoyable and accessible it was to play.  Not sure exactly what I was looking for, I went online to see what was available.

 Pavia, the French in white, the Imperials in Orange, deployed ready to begin.
Reinforcements are off to one side. The white lines in the centre are the hunting park walls. 

It turns out (not news to a lot of you, I know) that there's a hell of a choice when it comes to board-war-games.  Plenty of recurring company and designer names crop up in the genre and there are some decent guides on good games over on Boardgame Geek.  In the end, I chose something from Decision Games Folio Series, Pavia: Climax of the Italian Wars.

The generic Pike & Shot rules.

What prompted this choice over others?  Well, from my Italian Wars project, I know a fair bit (for a layman) about the battle of Pavia, which would help when it came to understand any scenarios on offer.  Secondly, the Folio Series is described as on the "entry level" to this kind of game; not necessarily simple, but a relatively small scope and a tight, compact set of rules. Thirdly, Infinity Games had one left on sale for a tenner - a tenner, you don't get three pints for that any more!

The specific Pavia scenario booklet.

So, after that modest outlay, what came in the post?  A slim, brightly-coloured folio (duh) containing an impressive map, a cardboard sheet of 100 counters, two booklets of rules and two plastic bags to hold the punched-out counters.  Just fyi, you need to provide your own D6 for this series, but that's hardly a hardship for gamers!

The Folio Series each come with two rule booklets; the first is a set of generic rules and the second provides the specific scenario and terrain rules for the specific game it comes with. For instance, Pavia uses Decision Games' Pike and Shotte generic rules (also used in the Breitenfeld game) and the specific Pavia rulebook.  Unfold the map, popout the counters, set up according to the scenario and that's you good to get playing.

The Battle of Pavia was fought between the French army under Francis I and Charles V's Spanish/Habsburg army commanded by de Lannoy.  The French were half-heartedly besieging the Italian town of Pavia, camped comfortably enough in a large hunting park, when they were surprised early in the morning by the sudden arrival of the Imperial army.  Penned in by the forests and hedgerows, and unable to coordinate themselves against the enemy due to the heavy mist, the French were badly mauled and King Francis captured.

The main Imperial force and the French siege lines.

The game Pavia is fought mainly in and around the hunting preserve.  Set up is dictated by the scenario, drawn from historical sources, but there are optional, less restricted deployment rules should players want to experiment.

In terms of actual mechanics, the rules are very tight, very specific and, although it took me a good three or four read throughs to finally grasp them, very quick to play and really, really entertaining!  The movement and c&c rules are very slick, your light troops can freely move on their own (subject to the terrain they are in,) while your Tercios and Gendarmes are much more restricted except when near a commander.  This gives you some splendid tactical options; rush in with your shotte to disrupt the enemy and wait for your infantry to trudge up behind, or keep your leaders back and move the whole line forward steadily.

Some tokens from Pavia, a Tercio, Loose Shotte, Gendarmes and two commanders

Combat is handled by comparing the difference in a specific melee or firepower stat and rolling on a D6 table.  Although there are some modifiers to take into account, the combat mechanic is streamlined and efficient.  One gripe, the lower the dice roll, the better - come on, I like to roll high!!!

Some artillery pieces are in the game, although they aren't really up to much, as are light cavalry and some midgame reinforcements.  Victory is on a sliding scale of degrees of success, but this can be offset by accomplishing certain objectives in the game (capturing artillery, looting camps etc.)  All in all, I'm hugely impressed by the scope and competence of this very modest game.  Pavia has certainly helped open my eyes to an area of wargaming I really haven't explored before.  I've had one and a bit games so far, on my own, but I'm looking forward to trying it out against a human opponent.  There's quite a strong board game scene at the club, so getting a game in shouldn't be a problem.

The Imperial vanguard and Francis' camp

There is a fair old selection in the same range from Decision Games, using different core rules for the different periods, 19th century, WW1, WW2 and Medieval warfare.  I'll probably pick up something else from their selection, but I'm quite drawn to a couple other publishers, GMT Games in particular, so we'll see what grabs my attention.

Nuklear Winter 68

A couple games have appeared at the club lately.  First up was our trial of In Her Majesty's Name (the photos of which I still haven't looked at,) and a new(ish) boardgame, Nuklear Winter 68.

One of Scott's finds, it's an alternate history/Weird War Three tactical boardgame, played through a series of thematically linked scenarios. The rulebook starts with a surprisingly comprehensive history of the second world war. Briefly, Hitler is assassinated, Himmler takes over, builds bunkers for the Thrird Reich to hole up in, Allies nuke Germany, build a wall round it to keep people either in or out, nuclear winter for a few years, radiation levels start to dissipate, Third Reich reappear, Mutants appear, chaos ensues.  Three factions are available in the game, each scenario dictating who fights whom; The Third Reich, NATO (with added Russians) and The Black Hand (the mutants from the nuclear wasteland.)

It has a random sequence of platoon activations mixed in with some, normally random, events; not all your units are guaranteed an action every turn, there's a nice balancing mechanic which essentially means most of your units will probably activate each turn.

The core combat mechanics is fairly familiar (stat + 2D6 +/- modifiers to beat a target number,) but with an interesting twist.  Each unit has three states, shaken, reduced, dead.  Attacks can reduce this piecemeal or with one powerful attack.  Although this can make the game a little dicey, it's still suitably difficult to kill something in one shot - a good thing.

Now, this isn't really the type of game I usually would go for, (I usually go for a bit more bling on my boardgames) but the theme and execution here really drew me in.  The board is both large wonderfully detailed, especially considering it's of a nuclear wasteland.  There are plenty of units available for each faction, including aircraft, artillery and the occasional nuclear mutant, and each unit acts appropriately to it's type, digging infantry out of urban areas is suitably sloggy.

I've had a loan of this copy for a couple weeks now and have played through about half the scenarios. Almost all appear well balanced, although the smaller games suffer from flukey dice rolls (looking at you Mr Brown.)  We're planning to run one of the three player scenarios soon, all three factions are fighting to control the crashed alien spaceship, what part of that doesn't sound fun.  Frustratingly for me, the first print run of the game itself is currently out of print, although the author is taking preorders for an expansion.

Heartily recommended.

Btw, If anyone knows where I could get a copy or if you have a copy for trade, please get in touch using the link on the right.