First Impressions

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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: Saladin from Shakos Games

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First Impressions: Saladin from Shakos Games

Few medieval figures have captured peoples’ imagination quite as much as Al-Nasir Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, more widely known in the western world as Saladin. His successful military campaigns in the mid and late twelfth century, along with his reputation for charity and mercy toward defeated foes, have inspired much discussion and debate ever since his death. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that his famous battles against the Crusader States and the Third Crusade have inspired quite a few wargames, including several battles in GMT Games’ Infidel, which I wrote about previously. The latest addition to the canon of games about the sultan and his military career is Saladin from French publisher Shakos Games.

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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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First Impressions: Warriors of God

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First Impressions: Warriors of God

This game is amazing, I think I’m in love. It’s also total chaos, wildly messy, and definitely not for everyone. It’s a fascinating representation of the Hundred Years War that manages to capture certain aspects of the conflict while throwing vast portions of its history into the wind. It’s a game that feels like it has been built around one specific mechanic which I’ve never encountered anywhere else, and the rest of the design has spiralled out from that decision. It’s got area control, dice chucking, unit recruitment, and, most importantly, lots and lots of leader death. I am super enamoured with this design, and I think every wargamer should play it at least once – it’s an experience you cannot get anywhere else. Let’s talk about it.

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First Impressions: Red Flag Over Paris from GMT Games

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First Impressions: Red Flag Over Paris from GMT Games

I can’t shake the feeling that I’m joining a chorus of wargame commentator by saying that I knew basically nothing about the Paris Commune before playing Red Flag Over Paris, the second game in the Final Crisis Series published by GMT Games. I did actually learn a bit about the Franco-Prussian War in school, but we focused more on Otto Von Bismarck and the theory of Realpolitik and basically ignored anything happening in France. French politics between 1815 and 1914 were not a focus of my teenage education. I must confess that I haven’t taken very many steps to fix that – unless reading The Count of Monte Cristo counts – so I can’t blame my ignorance exclusively on the Virginia public school system. If, like me, you are largely ignorant of this period of history then Red Flag Over Paris may be a great place to start. If you were already a rabid fan of Paris Commune, then I presume you’ve already bought the game and are just wondering if I liked it. The answer is that yes, my initial experiences with it were very positive, read on to find out more!

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First Impressions: Pendragon by GMT Games

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First Impressions: Pendragon by GMT Games

I have technically played Pendragon before when I sat down to learn the game (which you can read about here: https://www.stuartellisgorman.com/blog/learning-pendragon), but the first half of that game was with the aid of the playbook guiding all my actions and the second half was a fairly chaotic mess of indecision. I have since sat down and played the game for myself and I’m much more comfortable with playing it, but still feel a little out of my depth strategically. It is a real testament to the quality of the Pendragon playbook that I was able to complete my playthrough of the game without having read the rulebook. Sure, I referenced the rulebook fairly regularly – looking up specific rules and double checking how actions worked in specific situations – but I was able to play two entire Epochs without having to read the rules cover to cover. That’s impressive no matter what the game is, but doubly so with something as complicated as Pendragon. I intend to read the rules before tackling a full-length six Epoch game as there are definitely elements I still don’t fully understand, such as specifics of how the degradation of Roman rule functions, and over a long game those will probably come up more. I will also need to know the rules a lot better before tackling the enormous task of teaching Pendragon to other people, especially if they are relative COIN novices like myself. That all having been said, my experience playing a game of Pendragon was fascinating and I can’t wait to set it up again.

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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.

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First Impressions: Infidel – Arsuf 1191

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First Impressions: Infidel – Arsuf 1191

I was finally able to secure the big table for an evening late one night and I took the opportunity to unpack one of the really quite large maps that come with Infidel – the Men at Iron game focused on the Crusades. I’ve long been fascinated by the history of the Crusades, so I was very excited to try Infidel, but it was already getting late by the time I started setting up, so I picked my scenario in a rush. The scenario options in Infidel are intriguing – some of them are battles I expected, but there are some absences and inclusions that surprised me. Dorylaeum, Montgisard, and Arsuf all make total sense. I was very surprised to not see Hattin, Saladin’s most famous victory, and I have to confess I didn’t immediately recognise the Battle of Harran. Still, one of the fun things about playing these games is seeing what aspects of history someone else thought were the most interesting to include. I also have to say that the bibliography at the back of the scenario book was pretty impressive – multiple books by John France and not even one mention of Runciman! You love to see it.

In the end I settled on Arsuf – it had an interesting looking deployment and it’s both a battle I think is quite interesting and one I know a fair bit about. I then set about setting up the game – a bit of an involved process given the scale of the map but one that was pretty satisfying all the same. It was only after I’d laid out the armies that I noticed the note in the booklet that told me that Arsuf was quite a complicated battle with several important rules amendments and new rules involved to make the Men of Iron rules system fit the historical battle. Reading those rules and having played it now, I don’t think the new rules were as intimidating as I’d initially expected. That said, I definitely got a few rules wrong as it was both my play of Infidel, and I was playing the most complicated scenario! It was a lot to juggle!

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First Impressions: Richard III by Columbia Games

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First Impressions: Richard III by Columbia Games

I don’t remember when I first became obsessed with playing a Columbia Games block wargame, but I would guess it was some time between ten and fifteen years ago. That game was Hammer of the Scots, and I still haven’t played it. Something about it captured my imagination, but it cost at least seventy euro, I was a broke student, and I already had several underplayed two player games so I couldn’t really justify the expense. Still, the idea of playing Hammer of the Scots lingered on and every time it got a reprint or showed up in stock somewhere I would think “maybe this time”.

Starting this blog finally gave me the impetus to buy a block wargame and see if it lived up to the expectations of my imagination. Astute readers will notice that this is not a report on my experience playing Hammer of the Scots – and that’s because Richard III was significantly cheaper. I may have really wanted to crush the Scots as Edward I, but I wanted to keep that €40 more. I almost bought Hammer of the Scots anyway, since I never much cared about Richard III, but the title of the game is a little misleading. This game is not about Richard III – in fact in our game he didn’t even show up. This is a full retelling of the War of the Roses in block game form – and as such I’m much more interested in it. While I’ve never much cared for Richard III, his brother Edward IV is another matter.

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Men of Iron First Impressions: Agincourt 1415

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Men of Iron First Impressions: Agincourt 1415

I felt a wave of nostalgia when I first opened up my copy of the Men of Iron Tri-Pack from GMT – the new release that packages three of legendary game designer Richard Berg’s classic medieval hex and counter wargames together. It’s not that I’d played this game before, or any of the previous versions. I hadn’t even played a hex and counter wargame before, not really. My nostalgia stems instead from games I played with rather than played, and memories from my very early childhood.

You see, my father was something of a wargamer back in his day. He owned copies of classic Avalon Hill games like Gettysburg and Civil War. Some of the earliest photos of me as a child show him balancing me on one knee while he pours over a classic wargame, played solo in the basement of the house my parents were renting. As an older child my brother and I would occasionally coerce him into unpacking a game and trying teaching us how to play – as Virginians we couldn’t help but take at least a little interest in battles that took place in our home state. We never successfully played them, we were far too young and the games too long, but he gamely made an effort, and they were fun evenings even if we ended up making up at least half the rules ourselves. The closest we ever got to playing one of the classic Avalon Hill games was Civilization, a perennial favourite during the intermittent blackouts that accompanied major storms in the autumn. That game would be unpacked, the rules hastily learned, and the opening turns played before it got too dark, and we were sent to bed. We would leave it out with a plan to finish it tomorrow, but usually the power would be back, and it was far more tempting to play Super Nintendo instead. The more serious wargames never even got that far.