The English Civil War

by

 Ageod/Matrix/Slitherine

 Before the Second Battle of Newbury, the Parliamentary General the Earl of Manchester said "The King need not care how oft he fights... if we fight 100 times and beat him 99 he will still be king, but if he beats us but once, or the last time, we shall be hanged, we shall lose our estates, and our posterities be undone".

 The game 'The English Civil War' also has another title: 'A War Without An Enemy'. As in most civil wars, the word 'civil' was dropped pretty much at the start of hostilities.

 The English Civil War was actually a series of three conflicts. The first was fought from 1642 to 1646. The second was fought between 1648 and 1649. Both of these were fought between Parliament and King Charles I and his followers. The third part of the civil war was fought between the adherents of King Charles II, and the 'Rump' Parliament, King Charles I having been beheaded on January 30th 1649.

 This game is about the first part of the conflict, July 1642 to December 1646. The game comes with three tutorials and three campaigns, The tutorials are:

Basic Rules

Recruitment, Production, and Decisions

Advanced Concepts and Tips 

The three campaigns are:

Marston Moor

Naseby

The Great Civil War

 Just like 'Bonnie Prince Charlie', Charles I lost his best chance to end the war by swiftly moving on London. In Charles I's case this was after the battle of Edgehill in 1642.

 As in real war most Ageod games show that controlling land and cities is the key to winning wars. Without a proper amount of area under your control, you will die a slow death. As an army commander you need a population large enough to to recruit soldiers from, and also tax, and grow crops etc. to keep your army intact.

 The system used in the game is 'WEGO', meaning that both sides plan their moves, and the computer shows the outcome of your decisions.  The 'Athena' engine of most Ageod games works best with a smaller number of units in play. So the 'English Civil War' and its older brother the 'Thirty Years War' are a perfect fit for the engine. The turns are fifteen days long. This game, again like TYW, has regional event cards that the player can utilize to influence the war.

 In the campaign game, the king starts with slightly better forces and controls the north of England. The Parliament controls the south and London. The Parliament also gained control of most of the English naval forces at the beginning of the war. As keeping control of areas and gaining new ones is so important, sieges play a large part of the game. This really puts us budding generals on the horns of a dilemma. Do you parcel out your forces over a large area to keep control all of your cities, or do you keep a large army intact for use in both offense or defense? Remembering that, keeping a large army supplied is not easy. This is 1642, not 1942, and there are no trucks or railways.  So everything you need moves by wagon, with the horses that are carrying your supplies probably needing more than your army does. So warfare in this era is a lot like the later rounds of a boxing match. Both opponents have to try and rest, and then pick and choose when to attack. So there is usually a flurry of activity followed by both sides resupplying etc. 

 The Marston Moor campaign is pretty much a toss up between the King and Parliament. The Naseby campaign is, as it should be, tilted heavily in Parliament's favor. I have learned the hard way not to attempt battle early on playing as the Royalists.

 The Ageod 'Athena' engine has always had its detractors and its fan base. The area movement and lack of player input during battles has left some of the micro-management players out in the cold. To me and most others, the 'Athena' engine does a great job of showing how pre-20th century warfare really worked. The system is a bit hard for brand new players. Now however, there are plenty of 'how to' videos for Ageod games, and the tutorials have only gotten better.

 Now we have to move on to one item. For those of you with small children or grand kids, Dora can help us out "It's the map, it's the map, it's the map". Some parts of the map are not correct. From what I understand it is where some cities are compared to the counties or areas on the map. In reading the various posts and then looking at the map I understand these peoples' chagrin. The good news is that it really does not affect the game play at all.

 In May a patch (version 1.02) was posted about. It was supposed to include the following:


-- Some text Issues fixed.
-- Logbatch consumes a lot of memory issue fixed.
-- Leaders dont recover their stats after forming a group fixed.
-- Patch number does not show up fixed.
-- Issue regarding the construction of troops. Fixed, now you can build in the regions you have loyalty over 51% and if you have the assets needed.
-- Reg Southminster tooltip now shows ‘Clear’.
-- More WS for the Parliamentarian. Some structures generates more WS each turn. 

 Per the forum, it looks like it is taking longer than expected to release it because more fixes were going to be added to it. I was trying to hold off until the new patch was released to start playing, but time waits for no man.

 On another note, I love the movie Cromwell. Here are some quotes from people about him that I found:

Robert Leckie in 'A few Acres of Snow' called him a "hymn singing swine".

Clarendon called him a "Brave Bad Man".

An Irish Prime Minister in London is supposed to have said "I am not going to talk until you take that picture of that murdering bastard down"




Robert

Military Technology of The First World War

by

Wolfgang Fleischer

 

 This is not your typical book about arms and armaments of a certain period. It does not have just one or two pages about each weapon along with its specifications, along with a small write up on its usage. This book is an overview of all of the weapons and different technologies of the war. The chapters are:

The Administration of Scarcity

Machine Guns In The First World War

Trench Warfare And Geology

The Rise Of Artillery

Tanks

Chemical warfare

From The Catapult To The Mortar

Flamethrowers In Place of Fire Extinguishers

Motor Vehicles In Field Gray

From The Eye In The Sky To The Fist Of The Military Leadership

 Machine guns are gone over in detail, as they should be. Their development changed warfare tremendously. The book goes into the various countries' early machine guns, and how their armies attempted to come up with tactical plans for their usage.

 The pictures in the book are incredible. They not only show a large amount of obscure armaments, but also allow us to glimpse the life of a soldier from a hundred years ago. The illustrations of bunkers, guns, and ammo teaches you how the war's nuts and bolts really worked.

 The section on trenches describe not only the trenches themselves, but all of the defensive measures taken. On page fifty-nine is something I had never read about before. It shows a British Mark IV tank overturned in what can only be described as a 'Tiger trap' built for tanks. Simple yes, but incredibly effective.

 The section on artillery shows many different guns from all of the combatants, many that I had never seen a picture of. The pictures of gas mortar batteries are especially sinister looking.

 The chapter on mortars alone is worth the price of the book. Many books on World War I artillery pay scant or no attention to this weapon. On page 148 there is a drawing of a makeshift German 24kg 'mortar' in the loosest use of the word. It is really an iron pot with two attached rails to it. Just looking at it makes me feel for the extremely gallant or foolhardy soldiers who had to use them. There is even an illustration of a German spring catapult to toss grenades or gas bombs. This chapter is especially full of one of a kind photos and illustrations.

 For those interested in the military technology of the First World War, this book is an instant buy. For those of us who are interested in obscure and sometimes one of a kind weapons this should also be on your shelf.

Robert

Book: Military Technology Of The First World War

Author: Wolfgang Fleischer

Publisher: Pen And Sword

Distributor: Casemate Publishers

Strategy & Tactics # 305

Armies of the White Sun

The War in China, 1937-1945

 Strategy & Tactics: wow, that brings up a lot of gaming memories. I had played Battle Cry and Tactics II in the 1960s. I had even played Panzerblitz in 1970, but I had never really known how big the wargaming explosion had become. That is, until I stepped into a hobby store in 1976. I saw row upon row of SPI and Avalon Hill etc. boardgames. Among these was a bunch of magazines sold by SPI that was named Strategy & Tactics. These were a godsend. They were not only cheaper than the boxed wargames, they also had articles on warfare in history, etc. Lets be honest folks. We bought Strategy & Tactics for the games, not the articles. That argument was as specious as buying Playboys for the articles, yeah right. Just kidding, the articles were excellent also. Of the original run of the magazine, I probably owned 50 of them. After changing owners a few times, Decision games started to produce the magazine. They have been publishing it since 1991. The magazine is now, incredibly, in its 50th year. The one great thing about the magazine is it has never been afraid to publish obscure games for us history nuts. I believe Ty Bomba came up with the adage that "Nato, Nukes and Nazis" sell wargames. Well lucky for us, S&T has never followed that idea. I lost most of my collection of the magazines down through the years because of different reasons, but with the help of Ebay and actually having a subscription, I was able to bring my stable of S&Ts back up to about sixty of them. Almost all of these were released after Decision Games took over publishing it. 

Chinese Counters

 The magazine has only gotten better as the years have gone by. The games, like most wargames, have improved down through the years. The magazine is actually a wonder to behold. The articles and the physical quality of them are excellent.

Japanese counters

 The long and very comprehensive article, also named 'The Armies of The White Sun', is an excellent primer for the game and the history behind it. More than that, the article starts with end of the Chinese Empire and its subsequent fall into a bunch of petty states. The attempts of Sun Yat-sen and then Chiang Kai-shek (called 'peanut' by American general 'Vinegar Joe' Stilwell) to unify the country once more is also gone into at depth. 

Trying hard to capture every city

 We in the U.S. were never really taught much about World War II in Asia except for our involvement. Most people do not realize that WWII actually started with the Japanese invasion of the Chinese mainland in 1931. The battles for Northeast China had been going on for ten years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The game starts in the year 1937. The Japanese had already stolen a large chunk of Northeast China and renamed it 'Manchukuo' and set it up as a puppet empire under the last emperor of China, Pu-Yi. The war for the rest of China broke out because of the Japanese attempt to grab its own 'lebensraum' on the Asian continent. 

 This is from the game information on the decision games site:

 
Armies of the White Sun is a solitaire wargame covering the fighting in China from the Marco Polo Bridge Incident through Pearl Harbor to the planned 1943 Operation Go-Go aimed at capturing Chongking and ending Chinese resistance at the national level. The single player actively commands the invading Japanese forces, while the rules system directs him in the deployment of the defending Chinese. The player wins by capturing key areas on the map. Throughout the game, the player selects units for an operational force, then maneuvers with that force to achieve objectives while fighting Chinese forces as they appear during operations.
Components: One 22" x 34" map & 280 counters

My big push for Nanking is on

 



 In this game you will take on the role of the Japanese player against the solitaire rules of the game. The Japanese player can attack pretty much anywhere, because of his naval might. The first turn is the hardest in my opinion. As the Japanese player, you MUST capture all of the Chinese cities in the FTMOL (First turn minimum objective line). You have plenty of units and the Chinese resistance is sometimes non-existent, but you still have to come up with a plan to capture all of the cities. The Japanese units are given twenty-two movement points for the first turn. There is also a second Japanese movement and combat phase on turn one and four. This is to simulate the Japanese initial invasion and their attempt in1943 to bring the war to a close. On turns two and three, there are no Japanese second phases. This is to replicate the logistical strain the Japanese were under when in China. The two phases on turns one and four really help with with trying to capture all of that territory, but it is still a hard nut to crack. To represent the free wheeling nature of the war and the up and down capabilities of the Chinese, the game has some interesting rules. For each hex entered by the Japanese player you must roll one six-sided die. You can get a Chinese response of from zero to six units for Shanghai and Chunking. This rule makes it so the Japanese player has no idea if by entering a hex he has stirred up a wasp's nest or just some dust. Even before deciding on whether there will be Chinese troops or not in the hex you will have to roll two die to determine if any random events happen. These could have the Japanese using gas to a 'fierce Nationalist counteroffensive', and anything in between. One random event is called the 'rape of' , and is meant to represent the Rape of Nanking. If the Japanese roll it you capture the city, but your entire stack is removed from game play for that turn. The maximum stacking for Japanese units is eight units to a hex. There are only four turns in the game, but since each separate hex movement by you could result in a battle, it is not a short game. There are also rules on  battles that take place in rough terrain or if the hex has fortifications. Japanese units can be no further than six hexes from the nearest railroad or friendly Yangtze river hex to be in supply, and each rough hex counts as two hexes when tracing supply. The Chinese communists are able to interdict your railroad supply. The AVG (American Volunteer Group or 'Flying Tigers') have their own counter and rules for its use.

Close up of my Japanese forces closing in

 The above rules make the game a real nail biter. Do you make many small stacks and hope the die is with you, or do you make large stacks just in  case you run into tough resistance? Conversely, where do you stop? Do you try for one more city with this stack, or hope that the city in the next hex will fall to your next invading stack? 

 It is a bit strange to be playing a game that really has no enemy forces on the map. The fog of war in this game really keeps you on your toes. You can be rolling along for a few hexes and meet minimal to no Chinese forces, and in the next run into a sizable force. The random event roll that you have to do for each hex, even before you roll for the possibility of Chinese forces, really brings home the variables the Japanese ran into during the campaign. No battle plan that you conceive lasts more than a few hexes at most. You can find your force destroyed or too weak to continue with almost every die roll. You want to use large stacks of your Japanese forces in order to avoid the above; the only problem is that it makes your ability to conquer more territory that much harder. This is especially true on turn one with the amount of China that you have to conquer or forfeit the game.

 Thank you Decision Games, and all of the various companies and people who have worked on Strategy & Tactics magazine for the last fifty years. Without you we would not have been able to game so many far flung battles and campaigns.


Robert

I'm coming to you from a classified location, somewhere under the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. The Cold War has gone hot, but there's nothing warm about this particular theater of operations. Cold Waters, the just released title from Killerfish Games, has you as the captain aboard one of several different submarines, lurking about looking for prey in a dynamic full scale war environment. 

I did not get a review copy until the day of the game release, and I have not had enough game time to reach a final verdict before setting off on a full-fledged family road trip tomorrow. So I thought I would at least give some first impressions on the game since I know a lot of people are interested in it. Such games as this are few and far between, but there is definitely an audience out there looking for their next chance to fire off a few torpedoes into unsuspecting vessels.

So, is this a technical simulation requiring hours of study to even know what is going on (I'm looking at you Dangerous Waters) or is it an arcade style combat game focused on blowing stuff up? Cold Waters manages to tick all of the naval lingo boxes you could hope for, while being startlingly simple to jump right in to. This will probably make it ideal for most players looking for some Cold War naval action, while perhaps not meshing with a few gamers on the extremes of that spectrum.

The sub battles can sometimes turn into real knife-fights.

On the one hand, to play the game effectively you will need to understand and manage active/passive sonar, what cavitating is (and what depths/speeds it occurs at), steering your sub using speed/rudders/flaps/ballast at the same time, weapon loadout, planning your attack as well as your escape, dealing with upwards of a half-dozen or more torpedoes in the water simultaneously (yours and theirs), and how to use the thermal layer to your advantage.  

On the other hand, the game is played entirely with a third-person view of your sub. Looking about in the crystal clear waters, you will be able to watch enemy torpedoes coming in as you try to dodge them. This can feel a bit like cheating at times, since you can even jump the camera to one of your wire-guided torpedoes and steer it into an enemy sub. That said, the situation often becomes complex enough that you need all the help you can get. Targeting and firing your torpedoes feels a bit too simple compared to the likes of Silent Hunter 3 and its kin, since you simply look at the map and click where you want the torpedo to go. However, you do still need to be pointing in the correct direction to fire off the shot. You can also jam your tubes if you try firing while maneuvering too sharply.

I'll save a more detailed discussion for my full review, but my current thinking is that if the above paragraphs didn't dissuade you, and you are looking for some sub simming action, then Cold Waters is definitely worth taking a close look at. The missions and campaigns quickly get you into the action, but then you will usually need some real strategy and planning to accomplish your goals and live to tell the tale. That escaping alive part is really the crux of the game. More than a few times I got my crew killed by firing off my weaponry, then lingering about since I had not thought that far ahead. Anti-submarine aircraft are usually swarming above, just waiting for you to reveal yourself, and then the hunt is on. Run too hard and you may run smack-dab into an enemy sub that was patiently waiting for you in silence. Once the enemy torpedoes start closing in, the tension level ramps up to white-knuckle levels. 

Look for my full review and a gameplay video in about a week.


- Joe Beard

Official Website: http://killerfishgames.com/games/cold-waters

World In Flames 

by

Matrix/Slitherine 

 Right now Matrix/Slitherine is having a 30% off sale until Sunday 6/11. I used a coupon to pick up 'World In Flames'. I have been looking at it for a long time, but never pulled the trigger. Now, with the sale and the drop in shipping prices I decided to go for it, and I am glad I did. I have had the game for a few days, but I have been waiting on the rule book and the two player's handbooks. They just arrived today. If you didn't know the book price is added into the physical copy price of the game. So you do not pay any extra for the three beautiful copies seen below. Stay tuned for my thoughts on the game. I did have one of the original boardgame issues, but it has been quite awhile. The only thing so far that I have not been happy about it is the fact that the 1936 scenario is not included. Yes, it still does not have an AI, but I play board games all the time solo so it doesn't upset me , and I knew it going in. There are a some mods listed on the Matrix forum, and also links to players aid videos.