AUSTERLITZ 1805

from Trafalgar Editions

Just a brief word

Having seen the quality of Waterloo, great news is that Austerlitz is next on the list for this game's system.  With the scope for wider-ranging  movement and hidden units, this is the perfect choice.

As a taste of what's come look no further than their Kickstarter video: Austerlitz 1805

WARFIGHTER PACIFIC

from DVG

It began with modern conflicts against drug cartels and insurgents across the globe and then moved back to WWII, initially with the Americans coming up against the Germans.  Soon, single deck expansions reversed the roles allowing the player/s to field German units against the A.I. of American Hostiles.  In came Britain, Russia and Poland with different add-ons giving us more and morevaried equipment, units, actions events etc.

Still, the rules and principles of play remained very similar.  Then, there was talk of Warfighter taking to the future with a sci-fi variant, but for my part I'm glad to say that the latest incarnation has filled the glaring WWII gap and has given us Warfighter Pacific.

Inevitably, the rule book for the most part presents very little that we haven't seen before.  In fact the first 38 pages are well nigh identical, though I was very pleased to see that great care had been taken to consistently substitute different cards and examples in keeping with the Pacific theatre once again to copiously illustrate the rules.

Attention to details like that are what make DVG's products so appealing, as is the quality of all the components.  First class counters - five sheets worth - with rounded corners that press out with ease, combine with the series of decks of cards that both provide the combatants and drive the game functions so smoothly and finally there's the mounted playing board.

This latest one represents for me the best in the series.  Admittedly, still very similar to its predecessors, but once again the various card locations have been given a new set of images, just as the illustrations had been renewed in the rule book.  But best of all is the background scene.

The detail above on the right hand side of the board is very atmospheric, as can be seen in this closer view.

The few charts and deck locations have been streamlined to maximise the crucial space for where the terrain cards and hostiles will be placed, giving a very clean appearance to the whole. Yet again, an ensemble presentation.

For those unfamiliar with the system, I suggest a look at the link here to my original exploration of its processes, before returning to consider some of the specific points in the current Pacific theatre.

As always shed loads of lovely thick counters

As mentioned the bulk of the rule book covers the unchanged base rules; what I didn't expect would be the omission of the excellent final section which provided a play through of a complete 5 turn Mission.  For those new to the system I'm sorry that has not been included.  However, the main reason for that is a new section that covers the very different handling of Campaigns.

Up to now you, the player, have created your own Campaigns by choosing a selection of Mission cards and Objective cards to play out in sequence.  Now Warfighter: Pacific gives you a series of historical Campaigns, covering Wake Island, Makin Island, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Buna Station and Iwo Jima and two that take us back to the European Theatre, namely: Dunkirk and Market-Garden.

It also introduces the concept of Offensive and Defensive campaigns. Only one of the Pacific Campaigns is "Defensive" and only one Campaign features the Japanese as the Soldier Player.  Both of the European Theatre Campaigns, however, are Defensive.  Especially, with my personal interest- I've recently read Antony Beevor's "Arnhem" - Market-Garden is likely to be an early experience.

The following are the major new elements.  Each Campaign Display sheet has a map with Start Points indicated.  Offensive Campaigns list a series of Starting Location and Objective Cards to be used, while Defensive Campaigns list Starting Location and Mission Cards.    With Offensive Campaigns, a random Location card is drawn which is placed on the main game board in the first spot where a Mission card would normally have been placed and then a D10 roll on a chart gives you both the number of turns and the Location spot where you place the Objective card.

Defensive Campaigns work almost in reverse to the normal expectations.  A random Mission card is drawn and placed in its normal first spot on the game board, but the Starting Location card is placed where the Objective card used to be placed.  Your units are then placed on the Starting Location card and the objective is always to fight your way back to the Mission card! 

As with the first Warfighter WWII game, where you could play only as the American Soldiers versus German Hostiles, in Warfighter Pacific, you can only play as the American Soldiers versus Japanese Hostiles.  These Americans destined for the Pacific theatre of operations differ very little from their European comrades, except that many have the Hardy Hot ability.  For those of you unfamiliar with the overall games, this was a feature introduced through cards in some of the earlier expansion packs - except that then the ability was Hardy Cold to suit Campaigns fought on the Eastern Front.

As before, not all your soldiers will have this ability and so will struggle even more than their fellows to cope.  Incorporating fewer soldiers with the Hardy Hot ability is one way of making your game a tougher prospect!!  To match this many of the new Location cards feature … what else, but JUNGLE.  In fact, Hot/Moist/Light/ Heavy and Warm Jungle - oh and just Jungle too.

Lovely jubbly JUNGLE

Pitted against them are decks of Elite and Frontline Hostiles - for the toughest experience just use the Elite deck, for a moderately tough experience combine the decks.  Personally, I find Frontline units quite tough enough!  Once again as the initial Warfighter WWII did, even the single Campaign where you can play as the Japanese soldiers will only be possible by buying Expansion Deck 15 which contains the necessary cards for playing as the Japanese.

Fortunately with my review copy of the core game came a stack of many more expansions and so, if nothing else, I would recommend adding at the very least Expansion 15 to your collection, the contents of which can be seen below.  

However, among the other Expansions there are some that I feel I cannot conclude without a mention.  They are my personal favourites, plus ONE that isn't -  but which I suspect will be a favourite for many!!

For me Expansion #24 US Airborne, Expansion #36 Vehicle Pack and Expansion #43 Shore Invasions are a must have, especially the latter with cards appropriate both to the European and Pacific theatre of operations.  So, what's the one I really can live without, but many of you will immediately want?  Any guesses?

Expansion #42 UNDEAD

As they say "chacun a son gout" and I'm dead [sorry!] sure that it will definitely be to the taste of the majority.  So, kit yourself up and set off on your mission to take on even worse foes.

As always many, many thanks to DVG for supplying the review copies 

Armored Brigade, the real-time tactical sandbox which covers a vast swath of Cold War gone hot possibilities, has received its first add on content. It's called Nation Pack: Italy-Yugoslavia, and as the name suggests, it adds two unique new nations to the game. I won't go too far into describing the base game, since Robert did a good job of that here. Suffice to say, this a 2D RTS that will feel familiar to anyone who has played Close Combat or Combat Mission. 

What really sets the game apart is its vast scope. The game covers theoretical war in Europe between the years of 1965 and 1991. Accurate army rosters are available for 7 different nations in the base game, with this add-on increasing the count to 9. The other significant feature of the game is how it generates battlefields. Rather than having hand crafted maps or randomly generated ones, the game ships with several gigantic, accurate maps of various interesting locales in Europe. Individual maps are then generated from this by simply drawing a box of your desired size on that big map, and there you go, a new place to fight over. Combat can scale from company sized skirmishes to brigade sized brawls. This is the beauty of the game, it can be stretched and squeezed to give you exactly the sort of battle you want. 

Infantry squad knocks out a T-55 after losing their ride into town.

This new nation pack extends that sandbox even further by giving you two new nations to play with and a new map that covers 61 square kilometers of the Italian-Yugoslavian border. The two nations combined add over 250 new units to the game. That's a lot of new toys to play with! Now, I'm no aficionado of the Italian and Yugoslavian military makeup in this era (or any, really), so I'll link to the official description here which has a nice summary of the strategic thinking in those nations during the Cold War. The short version is, these nations were not the titans of the world, fielding first rate tanks and elite infantry. These are the oddballs, nations that had no desire to fight WW3 to begin with, nor did they have the resources to match the big boys if they wanted to. I've loved playing these sorts of secondary powers in every wargame since I got Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin as a kid. It's always fascinating to dig around in the OOB and see what kinds of units are available, and then figuring out how to fight a battle with what you've got. Here I was especially interested in some of the earliest formations, which include plenty of WW2 leftovers. I know lots of people are clamoring for the game to be expanded into a full on WW2 game, but here you can at least get a taste. 

Now, let's look at the new map a bit, as it offers a great variety of terrain to fight over. There are constricting mountain valleys, wide open plains, urban zones, coastal areas, and lots of rivers to cross. I have not fully explored the map yet, of course, but every battle so far has been on a tactically interesting battlefield. Where the map really shines is when you combine it with the new campaign generator.

The one great shortcoming of Armored Brigade (besides the lack of multiplayer) is that the game does not come with any campaigns and only a handful of scenarios. Those scenarios are mostly tutorials, and after playing around with them you are left with only one-off battles that you generate. While the battles you can generate are excellent, and created exactly the way you want, they are still just one off battles with no narrative or larger stakes to consider. That has all be changed with the free update launching alongside this nation pack, which adds a dynamic campaign generator to Armored Brigade, even if you don't have the DLC. 

Each green box represents a potential battlefield for the campaign. It can be much shorter, of course, or feature much larger battlefields.

This campaign generator is analogous to the single battle generator in that it is very flexible and easy to use. You just click on the map to indicate the general track you want the campaign to take, tweak the settings and scope as you please, and away you go. Each campaign starts off with a meeting engagement, and then the winner will advance and the loser retreat. As the battle moves towards one end of the campaign track or the other, the defender will be able to get more supply points and be able to build fixed defenses like pillboxes and such. If the momentum of the battle shifts and the fighting passes back over old ground, the destruction of the previous fights will be evident. This can change the landscape of a battlefield that is fought over several times, creating an immersive narrative for the player. Losses also carry over from one battle to the next. The player will receive a certain amount of supply points after each battle, and these can be used to repair and refit units lost in the fighting. 

This is a feature that the game desperately needed, and I'm happy to see it added as a free update. Really the only thing that I didn't like about the base game was that the battles never felt like they carried much weight, since they were just randomly generated one-off affairs. Now you can have a narrative arc, with real consequences for your losses and poor (or brilliant) decisions in battle. I haven't had enough time with the game to play out any epic campaigns just yet, but I imagine many players will be firing up a titanic US vs USSR campaign that spans the length of the Germany map. The especially cool thing is that everyone's campaign will be unique!

So, if you have been enjoying Armored Brigade so far, this is an easy recommendation. The two new nations add some extra variety to what is available in the base game, and the new map is excellent. If you were on the fence about Armored Brigade, the free update including the campaign generator has given it a lot more value, and I suggest that you take another look. I imagine we will be seeing several nation packs similar to this one over the next couple of years, and I look forward to trying them out. In a sandbox of a game like this, you can never have too many toys or too much sand.

Armored Brigade and the Italy-Yugoslavia Nation Pack are available directly from Matrix/Slitherine.

- Joe Beard

Dunkirk

by

Worthington Publishing

 Operation Dynamo was an outstanding success, carried out under the German noses. Was it helped by Hitler's private thoughts about England, or his memories of Flanders, we will never know. The game itself is not just about the Battle of Dunkirk, but about the entire German invasion of France in 1940. Let us see what comes with the game:

• Hard mounted game board
• Wooden blocks with labels for German and Allied armies
• Deck of 55 game cards
• 6 German strategy cards (larger than standard game cards)
• Rules
• Dice
  
  
  
  

 When you open the game it seems a little sparse, but many times good things come in small packages so I kept an open mind. The map is on the smaller side, but adequately shows the area of Northeast France that is needed for gameplay. The hexes are large, which really helps with block games, especially when you can have more than one block per hex. The other components are likewise, more workman like than artsy. I wouldn't say they were Spartan, but they show the player everything he needs to know without extra glitter. The game also comes with cards for both the German and Allied player. 

 Even though there are cards for both players, they are not the process that runs the the game. To quote the designer, "The game is not card driven, but card enhanced. The game is chit driven". The most interesting part of the design is the 'German strategy cards'. These give the game a lot of longevity and replayability. Sure, the German player could try the 'sickle cut' maneuver, but he could lose nine out of ten times depending on what strategy card he chose at the start of the game. The Allied player is put on the horns of a dilemma, which strategy card did the German player pick. So one of the the things the designer notes suggests is for the German player to make moves to head toward different cities etc. to keep the Allied player guessing. The rulebook is only twelve pages long, and three of them are taken up by designer notes, etc. However, unlike the other Worthington games I have played, the rules are a lot more  in depth. The other games were simpler, but still good games. The rules are deeper than you would assume for the game. This is the sequence of play:

1) Add or Remove Command Chits per the Turn Record Chart.
2) Deal each player a card(s) as indicated on the Turn Record Chart.
3) Seed the opaque container with the Command Chits indicated on the Turn Record Chart.
4) One player (does not matter which) draws a Command Chit from the container. That Formation is now the Active Formation.
5) FHQ (Formation Headquarters) ACTIVATION: The owner of the Active Formation reveals to the opponent the location of the FHQ (in order to prove the FHQ's Command Range).
6A) FORMATION MOVEMENT PHASE: In-Command blocks of the Active Formation may move to their full Movement Rating, limited only by terrain and enemy blocks.
6A) POSSIBLE SHQ (Strategic Headquarters) STRATEGIC MOVEMENT: The owner of the Active Formation may, if desired, spend a SHQ step(s) to perform a Strategic Move with a block(s) of the Active Formation. This may be done concurrent with the Movement described in 6a above, BUT NO BLOCK MAY USE BOTH Formation Movement and SHQ Movement during the same Activation.
7) POSSIBLE SHQ OUT OF COMMAND MOVEMENT: The owner of the Active Formation may, if desired, spend a SHQ step(s) to perform Out of Command movement with a block(s) of the Active Formation.
8) combat phase: Battles exist in any hex containing enemy blocks and at least one block of the Active Formation. Owner of the Active Formation selects the sequence in which battles will be resolved. 
8A) BATTLE CARD PLAY: Each player may place ONE (1) Cattle Card per battle, if desired. Players simultaneously declare (show) a Battle Card if they wish to play one.
8B) BATTLE ROUNDS: Each battle lasts for one round of combat. A second round may be purchased BY THE ATTACKER ONLY using SHQ steps or possibly) a card play. No battle may have more than two Rounds per Activation. A side may NOT play a Battle Card in the second round of battle, if that side played a Battle Card in the first round.
9) Repeat steps 4 through 8b until no Command Chits remain in the opaque container.
10) REINFORCEMENTS & RESERVES PHASE: Players may play ONE Reinforcement card, adding steps per the Reinforcement rules. Players may ALSO spend SHQ steps to conduct a SHQ Reserves action, returning an Eliminated block(s) to play, per the Reserve rules. Players also add one free SHQ step to their SHQ block (Note: there is no Reinforcements/Reserves phase at the end on Turn 6.
11) Start the next turn with step 1 above. At the end of Turn 6, calculate Victory Points to determine the winner of the game based on the German Strategy Card selected.

 

 As you can see, any game (no matter what German Strategy Card is used) lasts only six turns. Airstrikes/Artillery strikes take place when a player uses the correct Battle Card for them. Airstrikes/Artillery strikes cannot eliminate an enemy block. 

 I think it's a good game with a little bit more added  to the rules than most block games. The rules are spelled out plainly for the players. There are also some optional rules that can be added to balance out the play between two players. You can "dial down" certain blocks to make it easier for the opponent. You could also remove certain powerful cards from one player's deck, among a few other things, to make the game more balanced. I have reviewed quite a few block wargames now, and have had a complete change of heart. I used to look down my nose at them as some kind of 'Stratego' game made into a wargame. The block wargames are just as good, and play just as well as hex and counter games. This is another good and relatively quick game that Worthington Publishing has added to their stable of growing games. You will be playing as either von Bock or von Rundstedt, or the Allies in no time flat. Thank you, Worthington Publishing, for letting me review this game.

Link to Worthington Games:
https://www.worthingtonpublishing.com/

Link to Dunkirk:
https://www.worthingtonpublishing.com/collection/dunkirk-france-1940

Worthington Publishing's newest kickstarter 'Napoleon Returns 1815':
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1456271622/napoleon-returns-1815?ref=dkeeld

Grant's Gamble review:
https://www.awargamersneedfulthings.co.uk/2017/11/grants-gamble-game-by-worthington-games.html



Robert