Volko

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Review - Andean Abyss by Volko Runke

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Review - Andean Abyss by Volko Runke

It happened! COIN came to the internet’s best online wargame platform, Rally the Troops, in the form of the series originator Andean Abyss. In many ways this is the obvious choice for Rally the Troops, it’s both a great place for those interested in learning the system and out of print with little promise of a reprint soon, so not in direct competition with sales. It also offered me the first time to try and dive deep into a COIN game and see how I feel about the system after repeated plays. The requirement to get four players and dedicate most of a day has made consistent plays of COIN games a challenge. I have dabbled with solitaire play, and enjoyed that, but I’m terrible at flow-charts and multi-hand solitaire is a very different kind of experience. So, I’ve been logging many, but not an insane number, of Andean Abyss plays over the past month or so, what have I learned?

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Review - Nevsky by Volko Ruhnke

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Review - Nevsky by Volko Ruhnke

I must confess to feeling some trepidation when I wrote in my review of Almoravid that while I liked Levy and Campaign’s Iberian excursion, for me the original Baltic flavour was superior. You see, at time of writing I had just wrapped up several months of playing Almoravid and I hadn’t so much as opened Nevsky in weeks let alone played it. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was viewing my experiences with rose tinted glasses. After all, I’d only played a few games of Nevsky, all of them solitaire, and hadn’t even written a review of the game. I was thus very excited when news came out that Rally the Troops would be adding Nevsky as the site’s next game. Now I could finally give it the thorough exploration it warranted and determine with certainty whether the sentiments I felt so keenly after playing Almoravid were still true months later. I’m happy to report that they are! While I do have some quibbles with Nevsky, which we’ll get to, I’ve fallen in love with it all over again and found new depths to its design that I hadn’t appreciated before.

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My Top 8 Games of 2022!*

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My Top 8 Games of 2022!*

It’s the time of year for Top X lists and as a sucker for the format I couldn’t help but doing one myself. Now look, let’s get this over with straight away: I obviously haven’t played every game that came out in 2022. In fact, I’ve played barely any. I only just got really into historical wargaming this year, so I’ve had a big back log of games to experience. I’m not going to even pretend to list the best games that came out this year. Instead, this list will be my top eight games that I played for the first time in 2022. I chose eight because I’m one of those people who likes to arbitrarily pick a number between five and ten for my top X lists, no other reason. Ranking them has been painful, and if you asked me again in January I’d probably change the order, but at time of publication these are my top eight games that I played this year!

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Review: Almoravid by Volko Ruhnke

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Review: Almoravid by Volko Ruhnke

For me anyway, Volko Ruhnke’s Levy and Campaign series is probably the most interesting thing happening in wargaming right now. Most medieval wargames have focused on specific battles, usually as hex and counter games, and while my posts on Men of Iron should be evidence enough that I enjoy these games, my historical interests tend more operational and strategic rather than tactical. There are exceptions, such as the Columbia block games, but even these only capture a fragment of what makes medieval conflict so fascinating to me. Many great medieval victories (and defeats) are as much the result of the weeks and months that lead up to them as they are the prowess of the fighters on the day. That is what makes Levy and Campaign so exciting to me - it makes those weeks and months the centre of the gaming experience. The games include battles, of course, but the more you play the fewer battles you are likely to risk while the challenge of moving and supplying your armies remains constant!

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First Impressions: Almoravid by Volko Ruhnke

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First Impressions: Almoravid by Volko Ruhnke

It took me longer to get Almoravid to the table than I expected. Partly it was the sheer size of the game – the board plus lord’s mats for the first scenario pushed the limits of my little wargaming corner. I have no idea how I’m going to play the later scenarios. The greater factor, however, was a personal mental block around learning the rules. I learned Nevsky thanks to Jean Michel Grosjeu’s excellent YouTube videos on it – I did later read the rules, but only once I knew how play worked. The prospect of learning Almoravid from scratch, especially tired as I was due to a very hectic few weeks in work, resulted in me postponing night after night.

What finally helped to sit me down at the table and play was San Diego Histcon’s online Levy and Campaign Fest event. At the event I picked up and played several in development L&C titles and my experience with Nevsky, limited as it is, was more than enough to get me playing without having read the rules to any of these games. When I finally did sit down to read Almoravid’s rules, it only took me like 15 minutes since I could just skim the sections where the rules were identical to Nevsky. The rulebook helpfully highlights areas where rules are new or have changed so you don’t need to pick through it looking for differences. Much like with Volko’s previous series, COIN, once you know how to play a Levy and Campaign game it really does making picking up another one much simpler.

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First Impressions: A Distant Plain by Volko Ruhnke and Brian Train

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First Impressions: A Distant Plain by Volko Ruhnke and Brian Train

Before playing my latest COIN game I didn’t have to learn how to play it because someone else had to teach it to me instead! At the end of May I had the opportunity attend Chimera Con in Dublin. Chimera Con is a one-day convention dedicated to playing games with other people who relish the opportunity of spending all day playing the one epic game. The organisers seek out volunteers in advance of the event to bring a game that they are prepared to teach to a table of potentially new players, and then players are allocated to those games for the day. I got a space playing A Distant Plain, Volko Runke and Brian Train’s COIN game about the Afghanistan War, covering the period of the war from 2001 to 2013. This would be my first time playing the game, but my third COIN game overall so I was reasonably confident I could pick it up pretty quickly. When I had played Andean Abyss at the start of May, I had been the government player, so this time I requested an insurgent faction and was given the role of the Taliban. The game organiser was the Warlords and the other players, both totally new to the system, were the Coalition and the Afghanistan Government. In the end the game took us about 7 hours, and I had an absolute blast playing it. I also have a few thoughts about it which I hope you will indulge me by reading!

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First Impressions: Andean Abyss

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First Impressions: Andean Abyss

I managed to get Andean Abyss to the table less than a week after learning it, which must be a record for me – it definitely beats the years I owned Here I Stand before I finally played it. I bought it largely because while Pendragon has been fascinating to learn, there’s no way I can teach that game to four people who have never played a COIN game before. It took me days to learn it – and I’m still not even sure I totally get it! The internet wisdom around learning COIN is to start with Cuba Libre, but for whatever reason the Cuban revolution doesn’t really grab me, so I went with the original COIN instead – Andean Abyss and the Colombian drug war. After all, if it wasn’t possible for people to learn from the original game then there wouldn’t be a series, would there? I’ve already documented my learning process on this blog (www.stuartellisgorman.com/blog/learning-coin-andean-abyss) but what that didn’t cover was teaching and playing the game, which is what we’re here for!

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Learning COIN: Andean Abyss

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Learning COIN: Andean Abyss

Holy God this game is a lot easier to learn than Pendragon was. Part of that is certainly the familiarity with the system I developed over my two solo plays of Pendragon, but also there’s just a lot less going on and a lot less to keep track of! Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like Andean Abyss is a simple game, it’s more that I now see just how deep the water was where I first jumped in, and I understand why most people pick somewhere else. I know a lot of people learn with Cuba Libre, but for some reason the Cuban Revolution just doesn’t really appeal to me, so I decided that I should take a trip to South America instead. My knowledge of Colombian history is pretty limited, probably on par with a lot of Americans who are vaguely aware of the War on Drugs and its effects in Colombia but not much beyond that. I do know they have way too many hippos thanks to Pablo Escobar, but I’m not sure that will help me learn this game.

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First Impressions: Nevsky by GMT Games

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First Impressions: Nevsky by GMT Games

Cards on the table, I have played Nevsky twice as of writing this piece. Normally my First Impressions are literally that, reactions to having played the game once. I played the first scenario in Nevsky and afterward wasn’t sure what exactly to say about the experience, so after a few days I set up the second scenario and started playing. It’s not that Nevsky isn’t a fascinating game – it is, and we’ll get to that – it was just that it has taken me longer to digest it. Part of this delay is probably due to Nevsky particular design decisions, but part of it is definitely down to me and my own obsessions.

As should be apparent to anyone who has been following my posts up to now – I’m completely obsessed with the Middle Ages, and I’m also pretty obsessed with wargames. Unfortunately for me, medieval history is not the most popular topic in wargaming. While I’ve been enjoying my time with the Men of Iron series, hex and counter recreations of medieval battles isn’t really my main area of interest. I’m not really a ‘battles guy’. I’m interested in medieval battles because I’m interested in almost everything medieval, but I’m far more interested in how the battle came to be than I am in which flank did what first. Basically, I’m more interested in strategic and operational level tactics. That’s where Nevsky comes in – it helps to fill the really quite large void in operational medieval wargames. Nevsky, and the Levy and Campaign system generally, is exactly the kind of game I’ve been waiting for, and I think that’s part of what has made it so challenging to get my thoughts in order after having played it for the first time.