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Halls of Hegra by Petter Schanke Olsen and Lanzerath Ridge by David Thompson and Nils Johansson

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Halls of Hegra by Petter Schanke Olsen and Lanzerath Ridge by David Thompson and Nils Johansson

I play a lot of games solo, but I don’t play very many solitaire games. I’m not exactly sure why that is. I’ve had some of my best gaming experiences multi-handing a hex and counter game, but I’ve yet to find a dedicated solitaire game that has gripped me in the same way. As a result, I don’t play that many dedicated solitaire games, but I am also not beyond hope that I have simply not played the right one(s). With that in mind, I couldn’t help but notice the praise that has been heaped on both Petter Schanke Olsen’s Halls of Hegra (published by Tompet Games) and David Thompson’s Valiant Defense series (published by Dan Verssen Games) - in particular Lanzerath Ridge, a collaboration between Thompson and Nils Johansson. Both focus on lesser known actions in World War II where beleaguered defenders withstood ferocious Nazi onslaughts before eventually succumbing. While World War II is far from my favorite topic, I do enjoy killing the odd Nazi and I have something of a penchant for both niche topics and siege games. Since both games have a shared theme, I figured it might be interesting to review them together.

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Luzon: Race for Bataan by Matsuura Yutaka (OCS Review)

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Luzon: Race for Bataan by Matsuura Yutaka (OCS Review)

A system like Dean Essig’s Operational Combat Series (OCS) has a rightfully intimidating reputation. I’ll confess that if you’d asked me a year ago if I was ever going to play OCS, I would have told you absolutely not. It has some legendarily large games, with huge stacks of counters (a personal bugbear of mine), and playtimes that are measured in days not hours. The rulebook clocks in at over forty pages with three columns of text on each page – while it may not be the longest rulebook, I’ve ever read it is certainly in competition for that dubious title. As the name suggests, this is a system for operational warfare, one that focuses primarily on World War II but has strayed into at least one other mid-twentieth century war. You must manage individual supply points to take actions and balance stacks of counters to cover your air power, artillery, combat units, leaders, etc. There’s a lot going on is what I’m saying, and as someone who has only minimal interest in playing games about World War II it just did not strike me as something I’d want to try. I put all this up front at the start to hopefully provide some context for the news I must bring you: I am afraid that I think OCS might be great.

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Playing at the World 2e, Volume 1: The Invention of Dungeons and Dragons by Jon Peterson

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Playing at the World 2e, Volume 1: The Invention of Dungeons and Dragons by Jon Peterson

Few books have impacted me quite as much as the first edition of Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World. A 700 page self-published brick of a history on the origins and influences of Dungeons and Dragons was exactly the kind of deep nerd lore that I craved. I devoured it while working on my PhD, and even snuck in a little reference to it on my footnotes. Now long out of print, it was a book I would recommend but with many caveats around people having to really be into this kind of thing specifically. Thankfully, Peterson has seen fit to put together a revised second edition, now available via MIT Press, and Playing at the World has never been so approachable. While a weirdo like me can’t help but miss some of the first edition’s idiosyncrasies, even I must admit that this is altogether a more polished history of the origins of D&D and roleplaying games in general.

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Paper Time Machines by Maurice W. Suckling

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Paper Time Machines by Maurice W. Suckling

Paper Time Machines, which takes its title from a famous quote from commercial wargame pioneer James Dunnigan, is the latest volume in a burgeoning scholarship on tabletop gaming and in particular historical tabletop games. Within this new niche Paper Time Machines stakes out an interesting territory. Functionally, it is a college textbook covering a variety of aspects of the form, history, and design of historical board games. Teachers and professors will, of course, find much of value in this book for forming their own lessons, but how interesting is it for a non-academic reader?

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Washington’s War by Mark Herman

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Washington’s War by Mark Herman

It’s strange that it took me this long to try Washington’s War. Its predecessor, We the People, was my first ever historical wargame – an outlier in my journey, as I wouldn’t enter the hobby properly until decades later. Given my fondness for that game, I should have grabbed Washington’s War during one of my previous attempts to get into wargaming, but it took until the most recent reprint for me to finally get We the People 2.0 to the table. Unfortunately, that interlude was so long that I’ve now forgotten much of the nuance in the 1.0 version, so I cannot make any profound comparison between the two versions. Maybe further down the line I’ll open my battered copy of the original and give it a go, but for this review I will largely limit myself to the version that is currently available. That’s no bad thing, though, as Washington’s War is an excellent game that, while it shows its age in places, delivers a satisfying experience without losing itself in complexity. The genre-defining originator shows that sometimes old games can continue to remain relevant even after their systems have been adopted and updated by countless others.

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WItMoYW ep. 12 - Rebel Fury by Mark Herman

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For episode 12 of the We Intend to Move on Your Works Podcast Pierre and I played the latest hotness - Rebel Fury by Mark Herman. We are big fans of Gettysburg, the C3i game that originated the system used in Rebel Fury, but we emerged from our time with this game a little skeptical of some of its changes. But will our skepticism override Alexandre’s desire for a good bargain on an interesting looking game? Listen to find out!

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Yokai Hunters Society by Chema González - Review and Free Scenario

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Yokai Hunters Society by Chema González - Review and Free Scenario

Yokai Hunters Society is a light RPG by Chema González, based on Tunnel Goons by Nate Treme. I picked it up on a whim about two years ago because the premise looked cool and the print on demand version is very affordable (as is the PDF edition, which you can get from https://punkpadour.itch.io/yokai-hunter). It sat on my shelf before last year when I had a chance to run a Halloween one shot for my usual RPG party plus one more player who was entirely new to tabletop RPGs. I figured this very simple system would be a great way to play something on Halloween without it being overly taxing.

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Louisbourg 1758 by Mike and Grant Wylie

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Louisbourg 1758 by Mike and Grant Wylie

I struggle with what to do about games that are just fine. Not so good that I can pour praise upon them for hours at a time, nor so bad that they have multiple avenues of badness for me to explore. These are the games that I would understand if someone told me they enjoyed them but would give side-eye to anyone claiming this was their favorite game ever. Louisbourg 1758 is certainly among this august-ish company. It’s a perfectly fine block wargame, but it doesn’t quite stand out from its peers, unless maybe you happen to be a huge fan of the siege of Louisbourg. Usually when faced with this situation I just don’t write anything about the game – if I can barely muster the energy to say something interesting, I can’t really expect anyone to find the time to read it. However, this isn’t very satisfying and I feel represents a small failure in myself as a critic. In an attempt to tackle this problem, I’m going to try and curtail my usual verbosity and give a very quick first impression of Louisbourg 1758 outlining what I think is interesting and why it ultimately didn’t hold my attention.

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Historical Simulation and Wargames by Riccardo Masini

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Historical Simulation and Wargames by Riccardo Masini

Riccardo Masini’s Historical Simulation and Wargames dragged me back to memories of my undergraduate degree, but not to my history classes. Instead, this book reminded me of studying philosophy, and for that reason I believe it to be a work of philosophy first and all other things secondary. Its opening chapter is virtually pure philosophical discussion on the theory of games, including the kind of specific definitions of terms and ideas one would expect, and while other chapters do at times conform in shape to more historical analysis across the wide expanse of the book’s scope its wanderings have an altogether more philosophical flavor. This is not a criticism, merely a description - an attempt to outline what the book is so readers can set their expectations.

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A Year(ish) Abroad

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A Year(ish) Abroad

On the 13th of September, 2024 I moved to South Korea.

Not permanently, at least I don’t intend for it to be, but for at least the next year this is where I live. My partner has a job at the local university, my daughter is in the kindergarten, and I’m doing stay at home dad stuff plus whatever freelance work comes my way (hey, if you’re looking for an editor or historian, get in touch).

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The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge by Joe Starita

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The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge by Joe Starita

The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge is a fascinating book and an excellent example of how authors can find interesting ways to structure a historical narrative. Dull Knifes was recommended to me by a public history colleague who knows a lot more about American history than I do, and I bought it for my father-in-law for Christmas some years ago. I came across it recently while staying with them and decided I should really read it for myself. It’s a very easy read, at least in terms of the writing – Joe Starita’s background is in journalism and he’s an excellent writer – but content wise it can at times be challenging and emotional. The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge examines the lives of a single family of Oglala Souix Indians, highlighting one person each across four generations. In doing this it merges a wider history of the Oglala Souix/Northern Cheyenne with the specific lives of these men to create a work that is greater than the sum of its parts.

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WItMoYW ep. 11 - Glory III by Richard Berg

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We’re Back to Berg baby! After a mixed experience crossing the mountains, the boys are trying one of Berg’s takes on Antietam, arguably the most influential battle of the American Civil War. Originally published in 1995, the same year as the first GMT edition of Three Days of Gettysburg which would spawn the modern era of GBACW, and substantially revised in 2002, Glory is a light hex and counter from one of our favorite designers. Will we like it more than GBACW? You can probably already guess!

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Plantagenet by Francisco Gradaille

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Plantagenet by Francisco Gradaille

Any long running game series faces the risk of stagnation. While Levy and Campaign is only on its fourth volume, there are near countless future volumes in the works and it could easily expand to equal it’s predecessor COIN in terms of size, and so naturally we begin to wonder do we really need all these games? Can each new addition sufficiently differentiate itself from what came before? Plantagenet answers this question by being far more than a simple rejigging of the core system, this is practically a ground up rebuild. It takes mechanisms designed for the thirteenth-century Baltic and reshapes them to suit fifteenth-century England, casting off several core systems in the process and adding whole new ones. The final product is, surprisingly, probably the most approachable Levy and Campaign game yet and a stunning marriage of mechanism and theme. While Plantagenet fails to top the post in terms of my own personal preference for Levy and Campaign games, it is a phenomenal design and has reinvigorated my enthusiasm for Levy and Campaign as a whole.

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Rebel Fury by Mark Herman

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Rebel Fury by Mark Herman

I’m not going to bury the lede, I don’t like Rebel Fury. Nobody is more surprised about it than me. I really like Mark Herman’s Gettysburg, the originator of this system. It’s not my favorite game ever, but a hex and counter game that emphasizes movement and doesn’t overstay its welcome will always find a space on my shelf. While I shamefully haven’t played the follow-up on Waterloo, even though it’s on Rally the Troops so I have no excuse, I was excited to see what Rebel Fury brought to the table. My initial impressions were positive – it kept that core movement system that I liked but expanded the play space to encompass a set of large (and gorgeous) Charlie Kibler maps. The added chrome seemed fine and offered the tantalizing prospect of a little extra depth to the game, so from my initial pre-release preview I was feeling positive. Unfortunately, once I got my hands on it and started playing more my experience began to sour. The changes to the original system started to grate and certain scenarios exposed some of the core’s weaknesses in less flattering ways. If it wasn’t for a certain game that shall go unnamed, I would say this was my most disappointing experience this year.

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The Bone Chests by Cat Jarman

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The Bone Chests by Cat Jarman

I really enjoyed Cat Jarman’s River Kings – it takes complex archaeological practices and makes them understandable to general readers while also presenting a different perspective on Viking history than most people will be used to. I was understandably excited when I saw The Bone Chests in my local bookshop – I was hoping for that same marriage of archaeology, science, and narrative. Unfortunately, The Bone Chests left me underwhelmed. It’s not a bad book, but it’s not the book I hoped it would be, nor is it really the book that is promised on the blurb on the back. It’s undermined by its structure and core pitch, and in my mind fails to live up to the potential set by River Kings.

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Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons ed. Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and José P. Zagal

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Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons ed. Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and José P. Zagal

We’re living through a particularly excellent time for scholarship on Dungeon’s and Dragons, and this latest edited volume from MIT Press is a real showcase for the vibrancy of that scholarship. I’ll confess that sometimes these edited volumes make me a little concerned – it’s a real challenge to keep a book like this on theme while simultaneously ensuring that each chapter (twenty in total in this case) is interesting to anyone who might pick it up. That’s not to say that other edited volumes I’ve read have been bad – but rather that I often find myself enjoying at most one-third of these kinds of books with many of the other articles just being okay or simply not relevant to my interests. Given the range of fields on display in Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons I expected to find parts of it to be a bit of a drag, and while I cannot claim that I loved them all equally I found myself enjoying every single one of the book’s chapters. This is an excellent edited volume with plenty to offer anyone interested in the history, study, and culture of Dungeons and Dragons.

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Chancellorsville by Stephen W. Sears

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Chancellorsville by Stephen W. Sears

I’ve always had a weird relationship with Chancellorsville, but I like to think it’s not entirely my fault. Growing up in Virginia it’s hard to avoid it, especially if, like me, you lived an hour away and your dad liked to take you and your brothers there on random weekends to get out of the house. Chancellorsville looms large in the mythic lives of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson. It was also top of the pile in the “what’s the biggest Civil War Battle” debates that were somehow considered small talk in my home state. With all that baggage, it was hard for me growing up to not develop a slightly contrary preference for battles like Gettysburg and The Wilderness. That meant that I never really dug all that deeply into Chancellorsville, and I let the battle’s myths define it rather than learning about it for myself. On a recent trip to my parents’ house, I decided to correct this and I chose my father’s copy of Chancellorsville as the method since I had previously been really impressed with Stephen W. Sears’ book on Gettysburg. I am pleased to announce that Chancellorsville is at least as good as Gettysburg and may even be a bit better. This is a great book.

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A Short History of the Wars of the Roses by David Grummitt

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A Short History of the Wars of the Roses by David Grummitt

I have mentioned a few times that the Wars of the Roses are not my favorite subject. For some reason they have never caught my imagination the same way the Crusades or the Hundred Years War have. However, I was really impressed with David Grummitt’s biography of Henry VI, which I read last year, and seeing as the Wars of the Roses are intertwined to some degree with the end of the Hundred Years War I figured I should read a little more about them. I was also previously impressed with the A Short History of the Hundred Years War by Michael Prestwich, which was part of this same series, so this seemed like a great place to brush up on the subject.

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WItMoYW ep. 10 - Fire on the Mountain by John Poniske

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This episode Pierre and I branch out into the Maryland Campaign, with John Poniske’s take on the Battle of South Mountain, published by Legion Wargames. This is a hex and counter tactical game with a beautiful Rick Barber map and unusual rectangle unit counters. We liked but did not love it, and had some thoughts on some last minute errata that was introduced post-publication. I hope you enjoy it!

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Gettysburg 1863 by Grant and Mike Wylie

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Gettysburg 1863 by Grant and Mike Wylie

I set up the second day first. I did this because I wanted to tackle something that seemed a little more straightforward to put the changes to the system through their paces. I figured I would want to try the full battle at some point, which meant playing the first day, so for my experiment I chose the second day. Because Pickett’s Charge sucks. This was potentially a mistake – the logic was sound, but I forgot how boring I find playing the second day. Don’t get me wrong, from a historical analysis standpoint I think I prefer the 2nd of July, it has such drama and tension, but when it comes to wargames, I often find it tedious – mostly ill-conceived charges and brutal death. A tedium of attrition to resolve.