Spotlight on Games
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1001 Nights of Military Gaming
- N -
- Napoleon at Waterloo
Very introductory war game given away by SPI with new subscriptions to
their magazine Strategy & Tactics. Units are army, cavalry
or artillery rated only for movement and strength. Zones of control are
semi-rigid and active. Not a bad introduction to the hobby as it is simple,
fast and fairly balanced.
- Naval War
Card game about sinking World War II enemy ships. Cards from all
nations are randomly distributed to all players so there is no strong
adherence to theme. Is actually mostly a translation of
Nuclear War to a World War II naval setting.
Later release Atlantic Storm is another way of doing a similar
thing with trick-taking. Naval War tends to degenerate
into a luck-of-the-draw and popularity contest without use of two
vitally-important variant rules: night actions and partnership.
[Take That! Card Games]
- Necromancer
Magazine war game in a fantasy setting in which two magic wielders raise forces
from the dead to fight one another over three "jewels of power"
in a many-leveled misty land. The chief innovations are that players may
convert enemy troops to their own side and that the more units controlled, the
weaker each one becomes. Unit types are similar to those of
Sorcerer
with Zombies heavy and slow, Wraiths fast and weak and Skeletons
moderate with bows and arrows. Jewels have a large possible
variety of effects which are only determined when in the actual hands of the
necromancer. Several optional rules keep the play fresh as well.
This absorbing system is very expandable for more players
simply by photocopying counters and re-coloring.
- Nepal
For such a dramatic area, too few games are set in the
Himalayas. Thus it's great to see it being treated here,
especially by an indie publisher. Steve Jones appears to be
the primary designer at Blue Panther and in shorthand it's
reminiscent of
Railway Rivals,
but with the combat rules of
Civilization
plus endgame majority control. The entirety of Nepal is shown,
dotted with towns and divided into hexagons. All players begin
in central Kathmandu (though starting at different corners
as in Railway Rivals
might have proven more strategic) and expand outwards by
placing their cubes, each turn being able to perform a
combination of three move and grow actions. Play begins with a
few public demand cards in play, meaning that the first player
to complete a chain of spaces between two towns listed gets to
place a cube on the card's most valuable points award. The
second player to do so places on the second most valuable
award, etc., but only routes which are intact by the end of play
still count. As more and more cards appear during play, there
are a couple of ways at looking at strategy. Either one goes
directly for the available cards or plays for the longer term,
trying for wide connectivity so as to be able to pick up lots
of new cards when they appear. The map is divided into five
provinces and at the end the player with the most and second
most cubes in each receives points, providing a third
consideration. All of this works okay, but is greatly
complicated and made incredibly fragile by the injection
of combat into the equation. While combat is attritional
– lowest count in a space removes a piece first, then
the next, etc. until the space's limit is reached – it's
still quite significant and potentially
destructive, as a player who refuses to cooperate
with others can sink not only his own chances, but that of
another as well. Stubborn players can get involved in prosaic,
repeated combats that allow neither to accomplish anything, which seems
to particularly occur in the area just southeast of Kathmandu.
Of course co-existing with others has its own dangers,
especially in the last round of play when it facilitates
cutting off others' routes. Unfortunately instead of
kingmaking being curtailed, the system encourages it by
providing a full extra round of play once the end has been
sighted. This also has the effect of providing a nice
advantage to whichever player goes last; considering that this
is likely to be the player who ran out of cubes and is thus
already the leader, it's the opposite of a catch-up mechanism
and exactly not what one wants. Thematically, it seems strange
that no distinction is made for mountains, which
are considerably higher in the north and west. But then the
trade routes don't appear to make any sense either. While in
the area depicted the concept of trade ought to reflect a trip, here
it seems to represent something like rails or a highway, and
yet one that can be fought over and taken over by others. It's
all very difficult to reconcile with reality. On the other
hand, the quality of the bits is pretty good, perhaps apart
from the plain cardboard box wrapped in a sleeve. The wooden
board looks like real fake wood paneling and is brightly and
attractively illustrated. The small cubes are plentiful and of
good, glossy quality. The cards are well made and there is
this unique separate wooden scoring track that looks like it
was burned into balsa with a home woodcrafting device.
Unfortunately communication design is another matter. The
board, and therefore the spaces are way too small. Each hex
tends to be so crowded with cubes that one can't tell its
population limit; they really should have been colored
differently to indicate this. Another problem are the long,
foreign town names printed on cards in a difficult to read font. At
least one player is going to have to try reading these upside
down, not at all easy. The maps on each card help, but not
enough. Between the many cards and many statuses of the various
routes determining who is doing well is so long and tedious
that one tends to not even try. With five players, which is
definitely not the ideal though three will exhibit similar
problems, this can stretch to two unhappy hours by which
somewhere in the middle everyone will only be hoping for a
speedy conclusion.
MLMM4 (Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 4)
Steve Jones;
Blue Panther; 2008; 3-5
- Neuroshima Hex
You may have seen one somewhere. A transparent box is filled with mouse
traps, each trap with a small ball. Now a ball is thrown in,
triggering a trap which throws two balls, which hit two traps,
throwing four balls, etc. Now imagine that as a war game.
The board shows three concentric rings of hexagons into which
players land one to three randomly drawn hexagonal pieces per
turn (reminiscent of
Attika).
Present from the start is a headquarters piece for each.
Every couple of turns someone plays a tile that activates combat.
Now each tile, in its priority order, fires at the enemies at
which it aims. Generally, being hit means the destruction of
the tile except for the headquarters which simply loses
victory points from the track instead. Each player's army has
a slightly different set of abilities. Some tiles have the
ability to enhance others; some can fire into non-adjacent
hexes and some are even able to move a
little. Actually, the latter is often a disadvantage. In a
four-player outing, the board is so crowded that it's a happy
day when one can find a useful space to place a piece, much
less be able to move anywhere. If moving is your advantage,
your days are probably numbered. Thematically this is
apparently derived from a post-apocalyptic Polish role-playing
game, but it's hard to see what kind of reality it could
represent. Forces are not marshalled or marched in any way,
but simply dropped in. And what do activation tiles
represent? This creates a reality unto itself rather than
reflecting any sensible one. But this is beside the point in
any case as any time there are more than two players there are
definite kingmaker issues. As there are already four expansion kits
– mostly adding new armies – this is essentially the
collectible card game manifested in a new way. But too often
its play is simply a mind-numbing exercise in making obvious,
limited choices.
Michal Oracz;
Z-Man Games;
2006; 2-4
LLML3 (Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 3)
- Nuclear War
Satirical card game about major nuclear conflagration which owes a lot to
Touring.
What would seem
to be a no-win subject actually makes for a blackly humorous experience
as players used secrets, propaganda and nuclear missiles to gradually
reduce their opponents' populations, leading to the famous phrase, "Do you
have change for twenty-five million people?"
As players get to make a "final strike" when their last population is
destroyed, it often happens that no one wins. If a player happens to
hold a one hundred megaton bomb, he can even try to destroy the world.
Anti-missiles actually borrow from the rules of Mah Jongg they
cause that player to be the one to take the next turn.
Perhaps of less poignancy
now that the Cold War has ended, but still a fast and fun silly experience.
[Take That! Card Games]
[Flying Buffalo[
[Rules]
- Nuclear War: Nuclear Escalation
Expansion kit updated flavor for the newer technologies of the 1980's
including cruise missiles, MX missiles, spies,
space platforms and killer satellites.
In general worthwhile because more options make things less certain.
Can also be played standalone, although less successfully as there
are fewer cards. Six blank cards came with the set and for these
I designed six variant cards which
were published in Space Gamer magazine, issue no. 74:
Cobalt Bomb
– Neutron Bomb
– ASAT
– Weather Control
– Orbital Mind Control
– Mole.
Douglas Malewicki & Michael Stackpole; Flying Buffalo; 1983; 2-6
- Nuclear War: Nuclear Proliferation
Second expansion adds countries with special powers, which are a bit
unbalanced and not all that interesting. But the rest of the modernizing
additions such as SCUD missiles, atomic cannon, stealth bombers and fighters,
submarines, Patriot anti-missiles, saboteurs and other cards are well
worth it. After this there were also individual cards sold, later on
grouped into booster packs.
[Flying Buffalo]
- O -
- Ogre
War game based on the science fiction story "Bolo" by Keith Laumer
(who is better known for his "Retief" series). One of the first
and still best micro-games games playable in a half hour or so,
but still containing interesting strategic and tactical decisions
for both sides, even if inside a chaotic environment of dice rolling.
Probably there are not enough dice rolls to avoid the vagaries of
the dice here, but it remains an excellent introductory war game.
Later followed on by GEV.
[Steve Jackson Games]
- One World: One World
Two player war game (microgame) set in a wholly-invented mythological or
fantasy world. Actually works almost like an abstract as each
player has pieces of three types, each of which move in a different way.
Combat was handled via the rock-scissors-paper technique.
An amusing romp with more playability than one would first imagine.
- One World: Annihilator
The same package also includes Annihilator,
a two-player science fiction war game in which an enormous invading robot
ship immune to energy and solid weapons must be boarded and disable from within
by space marines. Very light and subject to luck of the dice.
More adaptable than most to solitaire play.
- One World, The
War game about an obscure topic, battles of pre-Columbian Aztecs,
has some novel ideas, but does not really work without modification.
[more]
[variant]
- Origins: How We Became Human
This one is not easy to write, especially having had a hand
helping to develop it for a while. But mine was not the main
hand and not all ended up the way I wanted so there should be
at least some kind of balance in my perspective. First, let's
entice with the novelties.
In how many games can you refer to an opponent as a
Neanderthal and be correct?
In how many can you enslave another player? Or force another
to enslave you?
How many games have the kind of breadth that goes from the
development of speech centers in the brain to the atomic bomb?
This one presents human progress as a synthesis of brain evolution,
resource exploitation (taking after
Guns, Germs and Steel)
and ideas. It is
a game of efficiencies with considerable luck. On a hex map of the
world play begins with each player a minor tribe, one of
Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon, Peking Man, Archaic Humans or the
recently-discovered Homo floresiensis. This may be giving a bit too
much credence to the multi-regional theory of human origins,
but works well for a five-player game. In later eras,
Cro-Magnon is considered to have "won" and player divisions
automagically alter to become races and then nationalities as
the three eras of play proceed. Player activities are governed
by two tracks: Innovation and Population. As these tracks are
cleared by removing cubes from them to the board or brain,
players receive more and more action points. Initially the
primary actions are to draw cards and move. Later, other
activities such as domestication (à la
Jared Diamond),
resource exploitation and attacks come to the fore. The first
two depend on the roll of the die to a great extent and thus
can be cruel, though some cards help by providing die
modifiers. Combat is part of the game, but normally should be
limited to a small, sharp attack if players are aiming to win.
One of the best things players can do is play cards that gain
them elders. Not only does this clear the Innovation track and
thus afford a wide array of possible Innovation actions, but
it provides the ability to bid on Public, we could call them
civilization or achievement, cards. Available in three areas
– information, culture and administration – not only
do they provide most of the victory points, they also
confer some side advantage or disadvantage or both. Administration
cards provide an interesting example. Each turn the player
needs to perform a die roll to see whether his civilization
has collapsed. The fewer cubes he has on his Population track,
the more likely this is, but the player's best administration
card modifies the die roll to make it less likely. So this
is good, usually. But the inventor also presents the theory
that before a civilization can make progress into the new era,
it first must fail. So at a certain point the player actually
wants to fail this roll and if he has too much administration
it can be difficult. By the way, each player has a different
set of victory conditions, i.e. wants to collect just two
types of cards. But as in
Aquarius,
one action is to exchange victory conditions with someone
else, which can be cancelled at some cost by the intended
victim.
In terms of design, most great games have at least one
innovation not really seen in games before. Here we can count
at least three: (1) forces travel along hex lines and fully
occupy the three hexes around the intersection on which they
stand; (2) technology transfer occurs by one player picking up
a card from another's discard pile – very easy and
intuitive; and (3) gaining ability places something called
Elders into a pool which, when spent, are not removed, but
just go into the expended state from which they may be reset
and spent again and again – a nice representation of the
idea of capacity.
At the same time there are aspects of the game that will
irritate those sufficiently sensitive to problems of the
kind. Some are caused by attempts to bring out as much of the
theme as possible. Weather changes occur by die roll and can
severely cramp the range and options of some positions, which
may find their players with not much to do for rather long
periods of time. There are also going to be a few too many
niggly details for some, like remembering which tracks cubes
go to and come from and other matters, enough to inspire me to
create a
help sheet
to be used in addition to the one already in the game. Then
too, the discard pile system means that memory is a useful
skill which can be irritating to some. There are game flow
issues. Card draws are at the
start of the turn rather than the end, which can slow down
play. The design correctly diagnoses the potential for a runaway
winner, but solves it not by helping out those in the back,
but by creating an intentional bottleneck, that is the wait for
the very-hard-to-achieve energy level 2, which is the only way
to reach Era III. Of course this is a solution, but it's a blunt
force instrument that just makes everyone wait. The biggest
omission, however, is that there is not enough strategic variation.
Winning is a matter of playing in one kind of way, constantly
improving the Innovation track, having Elders to bid with and
progressing as fast as possible. There is no room here for an
idea such as a military victory or other kind of strategic
path. In fact, even attempting such is a major disaster as the
player who constantly fights finds himself with almost no actions and
little ability to climb out of the hole he has dug for
himself. Not only that, he puts his attackee(s) into the same
hole and, as cards are coming out at a slower than usual rate,
delays the progress of play for everyone. On the plus side,
however, this is an excellent treatment of theme. Some of its
bases are controversial, but they're often fascinating
nonetheless, such as Jaynes' theory of the
bicameral mind.
Each of the cards is labeled and illustrated with some
milestone in the human march to Progress. The
rulebook and backs of pages contain considerable background
information (in English only, while the rules themselves are in
both English and German, which is confusing at first, but
eventually assimilable).
Furthermore, the latest research and findings are often
included, such as the
recent discovery of settlements now lying beneath the North Sea.
The Diamond thesis that describes
how Eurasia had the best plants and animals while other
continents did not is somewhat departed from because otherwise
it would hardly be a balanced game. Good plants and animals are
found throughout the world.
Perhaps the single most interesting feature is one I
discovered by accident and I doubt was put in intentionally,
but comes out naturally from the research. Players often neglect
climate changes alter that the map by colonizing
areas they are not allowed to enter. To correct this tendency
I started placing translucent chips over the spaces which could
not be entered. Together these chips created lines which completely
isolate certain map areas. Sub-saharan Africa was one; the East
Asian heartland another; the rest of Eurasia a third. The
interesting bit is that this completely dovetails with what
some Berkeley anthropologists theorize must have happened in the
ancient human past: human groups cut off from one another, reduced to
smaller groups that were unable to interbreed. According to them,
anyone looking for an explanation of why there are races, and what
races are, need look no further. It's rather amazing to have this
elucidated by a game. In terms of production, having been
produced by the German printer Ludofact, this effort is head and
shoulders above anything to previously appear from
Sierra Madre Games.
True, the box is too large, but that does leave
room for expansion kits, even other Sierra Madre Games games. The
map looks good for the most part, although the use of a
saturated red over saturated blue causes the "color
vibration", used to great effect in ancient Etruscan tombs,
but somewhat jarring here. The overall footprint is also large as
besides the board, a player needs a personal display and also a
help sheet. It all just barely fits on a large table. I find
it useful to also add clear chips to remember the starting
points for the tracks and as mentioned above, for the map.
To wrap up, this is certainly not for everyone. It probably
needs more than two players to be good and at least three
hours as well. It has a few too many rules to be other than a
game for gamers. Although aiming for the German-style, it ends
up more a hybrid. Its fans will be those having patience, open
minds and above all an interest in its theme. Still, it's not
difficult in the
Chess
sense, just a bit complicated.
[summary]
Strategy: Low; Theme: High; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 7
Philip Eklund;
Sierra Madre Games
2007; 2-5
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