Joe Beard
Episode 2 of the podcast is up! This episode features a review of the movie Dunkirk, a look at what's been posted here on AWNT in t...
For your Wargamer, Toy soldier collector, MiniFig collector, military history nut. Reviews, interviews, Model Making, AARs and books!
Skirmish Line Podcast - Episode 2
Joe Beard
GGWITW on Steam NOW LINK TO GAME ON STEAM
For your Wargamer, Toy soldier collector, MiniFig collector, military history nut. Reviews, interviews, Model Making, AARs and books!
GGWar in the West on Steam and on sale!
GGWITW on Steam NOW
Celebration Time Well the website has passed the 300,000 views mark since it's birth last April! Oh and it's the e...
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Fighting The Somme by Jack Sheldon Well gang, I am here to report that Jack Sheldon has done it once more. His num...
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Fighting The Somme By Jack Sheldon
Falkenhayn (chief of the German Great general staff) was too interested in his operations at Verdun to 'bleed the French dry' to objectively listen to General Fritz Von Below and his warnings about the French and British looming attack on the Somme. Even after the Allied attack, Falkenhayn only reluctantly released troops from the charnel house of Verdun to the Somme area. So, in many ways the Battle of The Somme fulfilled its role in taking pressure off of the French Army at Verdun. It is true that the Allied, and especially the British Army, spilled much more blood than necessary at the time. The British Army was, in 1916, a force that had to deal with a lot of growing pains. Unfortunately they had to learn many things on the job. The author shows and explains these points and more.
Mr. Sheldon has, as usual, done a superb job in showing us the thoughts, actions, and reasoning behind the German defense. His chore is made that much more difficult because of the loss of most of the Prussian records from WWI in 1945. He shows that the battle was a learning process for both Armies. The author ends the book with an insightful look at the battle as a whole, and its repercussions for both the German and Allied Armies.
Robert
Book: Fighting The Somme
Author: Jack Sheldon
Publisher: Pen And Sword
Distributor: Casemate Publishers
Mark Antony A Plain Blunt Man by Paolo de Ruggiero The author states on page 161: "Suetonius is i...
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Mark Antony A Plain Blunt Man by Paolo de Ruggiero
RUM & BONES : SECOND TIDE There are PIRATES and then there are PIRATES . And those in RUM & BONES : SECOND TIDE are...
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RUM & BONES : SECOND TIDE
RUM & BONES : SECOND TIDE
All the ships have a number of sturdy cardstock tiles that depict the objective tiles to be potentially captured, deployment point markers and gangplank tiles that are the main routes that each player vies to secure in order to attack and board his/her opponent's ship.
and deployment point markers
The many other cardboard components include a substantial range, including familiar tokens such as Damage, Condition, Activation and Coins and what self-respecting Pirate game would be complete without a set of Dead Man's Tokens! Slightly oddly named for a game set at sea are the ten Hero Dashboards, two Crew Dashboards and the two Sea Creature Dashboards. I'm not sure where this terminology first sprang from, but it is a growing usage that seems to be replacing more familiar terms for the card that contains a figures stats and other necessary information.
As you might expect they contain a dashing full colour image of the character, rendered in a strongly cartoon style, the number of hit points necessary to remove them temporarily from the board [note, I didn't say kill them] and three slots for the different skill cards that they may acquire.
There is a neat interaction between your Crew and Heroes. The former are a mindless bunch who operate on programmed paths from which you cannot divert as they march inexorably towards one of the assigned enemy Deployment Points. However, as they do so, anything in their path that can be attacked whether enemy Objective tile or enemy Hero must be attacked. If they reach their assigned enemy Deployment Point, an orgy of looting and pillaging takes place, as they make one last attack before being removed from the board.
As the ship boards are divided into square zones and moves are orthogonal from zone to zone, calculations are very straightforward both for movement and the one time you fire at range which is part of Crew Activation. I'd love to be able to fire broadsides, but a game would probably be over in ten minutes or less! So, I'll just have to make do with the single firing of my Deck Gun and my Hero Gunner.
The five Heroes are your most flexible characters as they make take up to three Actions, while each has a variety of Skills that can be built up and brought in to play and upgraded. Each Hero's type [Captain, Brute, Swashbuckler, Gunner and Quartermaster] directs the type of Skills they are likely to possess. They all also have one important ability that your Crew don't. They can move from ship to ship by swinging on ropes from the rigging - for me an absolutely essential part of a tactical pirate game. Even better, you can decide how far you want to swing up to six zones - then roll a single D6. Roll equal to or less than the number of zones you've moved and you succeed. If you're feeling really lucky or absolutely desperate, then swing 6 zones and pray that you roll a 6! Fail and its Overboard for you, me hearty.
As hinted at earlier, however, it's not curtains even if you lose your last life point in combat. Perhaps, falling in the sea may not be fatal, but just what does losing all your health points mean? Obviously, not dying! The term used is KO'd - familiarly knocked out. Still, this is a very normal mechanism in many fantasy games, such as dungeon-crawlers, where it's usually essential in order to keep individual players in the game, but [just a personal thought] when you have three Heroes in play, is it quite so necessary? I shall certainly explore the variant idea of starting play with only three Heroes, who die as they are KO'd, but then allowing you to bring the other two on board.
"Cap'n, are we fighting for booze, a good brawl, gold bullion or pieces of eight?"
"Nah, Mate, eight victory points!"
Perhaps, they might at least have been called Notoriety Points!!
[mutters, stifled groans, sighs ... OK, you can say it ...
Great Generals of The Ancient World by Richard A. Gabriel Let's begin this review with a list of the book'...
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Great Generals of The Ancient World by Richard A. Gabriel
Let's begin this review with a list of the book's chapters. These are:
What Makes Great Generals Great
Thutmose III Of Egypt
Moses
Sargon II The Great Of Assyria
Phillip II Of Macedon
Scipio Africanus
Hannibal Barca
Julius Caesar
Marcus Agrippa
Muhammad
Why Not Alexander?
I agree completely with five of the nine choices, but you aren't reading this for my choices. Mr. Gabriel starts out with an easy choice for ancient Egypt. Instead of Ramses the what, we have Thutmose The Great. Ramses II's long life allowed him to build or put his name on almost every part of Egypt. However, his claim to 'greatness' falls short, especially in the military field. Mr. Gabriel shows that Thutmose III and Phillip II are the only two on the list that were true innovators in the military field in their time. If not for Thutmose III, the splendor of the New Kingdom would not have reached the heights it did.
It is hard to judge the two religious leaders Moses and Muhammad, because we mostly only have religious or religiously bent writings about them, although the author makes a fine argument for them to be on his list.
Assyrian kings are usually not thought of as ancient conquerors or generals. They are usually portrayed as ancient psychopaths that happened to wear a crown. Why they are always singled out I don't know. There was enough terror and horror in ancient warfare to spread the wealth. Mr. Gabriel makes a great case for Sargon II to not only be a great ancient general, but also deserving of the title of 'great'.
Phillip II we have touched upon. He took a backwards impoverished small nation and made it ready to conquer almost the entire known world. Before Phillip II, the Macedonians spent more time killing each other. Very few of the Macedonian kings died in their beds from old age.
Scipio needs no introduction, as Hart's biography of him is titled 'Greater Than Napoleon'.
Hannibal is in a class by himself. Not only did he have more engagements than most of the others, he was leading a mercenary army for the most part. His romping through Italy for a decade and a half is the stuff of legends.
I did a review of Carrier Deck last month when it released, but the game has had a solid patch applied since then, which fixed pretty ...
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Carrier Deck 1.1.2 Gameplay
I did a review of Carrier Deck last month when it released, but the game has had a solid patch applied since then, which fixed pretty much all of the issues I had with it. I wanted to do a video of the game in action, so you can see how it plays after being smoothed out a bit.
Enjoy!
- Joe Beard
Tigers In Combat III by Wolfgang Schneider 'Tiger'; a word that would stop the hearts of Russian and alli...
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Tigers In Combat III by Wolfgang Schneider
Flick 'em Up! review Flick ‘em Up! by Pretzel Games is a ‘bullet’-flicking dexterity game in which your posse of outlaws or law...
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Flick 'em Up! review
Flick 'em Up! review
The box in all its glory |
Wood, glorious wood, hot lead and cacti! (just a selection from the game) |
I consider one of the best rules to be the loss of a movement action if your movement disc bumps into anything before it stops; in that case you lose that action and reset the pieces to where they were before you flicked. The opposite is true when you decide it's time to flick some bullets, if they knock over or move a cactus, or any other object it stays where it is. Bullets permanently change the environment, move attempts do not. The only time a movement disc can touch the environment is when entering a building, which is also the only way to engage in a cowboy duel - more of that later.
Sharp shootin' sheriff taking care of business |
Even more flicking goodness |
The game setup can be a bit of a chore. It's still quick when compared to many other games but you will be placing tokens and setting the environment up for up to 10 minutes prior to getting down to serious flicking. The more of this I've played, the more relaxed I was for how precise the setup should be for the scenario. The scenario book contains a picture of where each component should be placed but the reality is you're playing this for fun, relax a little (I'm talking to myself here) and just set it up as quick as you can. There is no room for 'rules-lawyering' in this game.
The game designers, Jean-Yves Monpertuis and Gaëtan Beaujannot, state that this is a 2-10 players game and I have tried nearly all player counts. It is a fantastic game and plays equally well from 2 players right up to 6 players but I have some reservations about playing with more than 6 as the time between turns for individuals would start to feel too long. Given ideal playing conditions, i.e. a large table with lots of walk room all the way round and 10 players who didn’t need any advice then I could see higher player counts working well. In all my plays, however, we were battling chairs and sometimes literally falling over each other to get the proper angle for that crucial shot.
The lawmen are surrounded by horse-riding natives and also being shot with flaming arrows from the mountain. It's not looking good. |
Dexterity games tend to induce lots of laughter and groans in equal measure, some of the loudest moments in this game are heard in the archetypal cowboy duels; included from Scenario 2. Thick western drawls and actions mimicking a high-noon stand-off were almost compulsory, adding further to the friendly and fun atmosphere this game creates. When figures from opposing teams enter the same building they will have a duel and the victor gets to flick the loser out of the building. Being able to flick the opposing teams cowboy really captured the theme of throwing them out of the swing doors of the saloon and was inordinately fun. In a normal move you replace your cowboy with a movement disc and flick the disc, replacing the disc with your cowboy wherever it stops.
The Good The Bad and The Ugly...note the dual-wielding lawman - two shots for one action |
[EDIT: Since the summer school holidays have started my son has requested, not only to play this game every day but also to include the expansions as well. The Indians with their flaming arrows (in more than one sense) are his favourite posse.]
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