GLOOM OF KILFORTH

Fantasy quest games have a good, solid lineage and, if you haven't read my recent interview with Tristan Hall, the designer & producer of Gloom of Kilforth, then have a quick look there to see some of the classics that inspired and to some extent influenced his design.  

In terms of narrative and theme, it is difficult for any treatment to be original.  In some form or other, it's going to involve questers journeying through a fantasy world, encountering strange creatures, gaining skills, powers and artefacts usually in order to attain some final goal.  In that respect,  Gloom [for short] perhaps inevitably can be little different. 

For many designs and designers, it is the underground route that is taken; the route of trolls and orcs, goblins and the undead through dark and noisome passages and echoing vaults with treasure chests and pitfalls, traps and poisoned stakes, locked and unlocked doors. The tendency of these examples of the genre is for them to be played out on game boards or large tiles that are drawn and laid down to form ever changing locations.  They are usually handsomely fleshed out with miniatures, structures and furnishings. They are mainly designed for cooperative play, often against one member of a gaming group who takes on the role of dungeon master, who either plays a neutral role overseeing all the action and die rolls or in a more aggressive role as the Evil One.  For some groups this can be a stumbling block when there are few players or simply because everyone wants to be an exploring Hero!

For many gamers, part of the pleasure of these games is the painting of the plastic and the tactile and visual appeal.  Cards may play some part, but rarely a major one.  Where cards do dominate, it tends to be in the more confrontational games set in fantasy/sci-fi worlds; probably the best known and earliest is Magic: The Gathering and its infinite new decks.  This flourishing and major sub-sector; LCGs [Living Card Games]has seen  a huge expansion in recent years, often driven by derivations from cult classics, from the cross-fertilised worlds of literature and graphic novels, film and T.V. such as Lord of The Rings and Game of Thrones, or Arkham Horror and Android: Netrunner [itself spawned from the original board game Android, with its loose connection to the work of Robert Heinlein].

Tristan Hall has chosen to take the latter path of the card-centred world, though largely in a non-combative direction or at least not in combat against another game player.  Whether through solo, cooperative or mildly competitive play, the real opponent is the game system and I make no bones about saying that it is solitaire play that occupies and absorbs my time with this game.

From the moment I saw the box art and then the many cards that form the game, I had one thought in mind; eerily seductive - what better quality could a fantasy quest game possess. Though I may be following in the path of others before me,  I think that it's almost impossible not to start with the art work of this game. It is stunning!  It has a huge impact on how you perceive this game!  So, hats off here to Ania Kryczowska and to Tristan's willingness to entrust so much to one person.  There is a blend of the fey and the brutal that caused a quotation from Keats' poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" immediately to spring to mind,
            "O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
             Alone and palely loitering?"
The result is a consummately consistent vision for this fantasy world, whose backstory is outlined on the back of the box.

A game begins with the following three steps -all of which can be done by random draw or personal choice: [1] select one of four quests [2] select a Race for their Hero [3] select a Class.  If more than one person is playing, then each follows the same process separately.  Your Hero is represented by a cardboard standee according to the Race you have chosen - a good touch is that each one has a male/female side.  

Your game board is a five x five landscape of cards - the eponymous Kilforth that will slowly succumb day by day to the GLOOM part of the title.  As night falls on the land one more of its locations will fall into not just the ordinary darkness at the end of a day, but the everlasting darkness of evil.  This is signified by turning over the randomly selected location card, thus providing a neat and handy game timer too.  When all 25 locations have fallen to the Gloom, you've lost!

Here you can see the whole game set out ready to play with the 5x5 grid at its heart. 

In the very middle is Sprawl City, where your chosen Hero [or Heroes] will begin the quest.

Each location is separately named and at the beginning of every game the grid of cards is randomly laid out, with only Sprawl City always being located at the centre [though even this could be changed, if you wanted to].  In this way, we are introduced to one of the many variables that make Gloom highly replayable.

Though each location is individually named - in the photo above you can just see the edge of the Blessed Grove and the Grand Plains - the terrain types are limited to four: Plains, Mountains, Forest and Badlands.

The four decks, one for each type of terrain, are called the Encounter Decks, so-called because as you enter you will turn one of the appropriate cards up and encounter whatever is revealed on the card.  Successful encounters will possibly lead to drawing from one of the four Reward Decks: Spells, Items, Titles and Allies.

Just one of the four Reward Decks

A very minor criticism has been that the illustrations for the backs of these decks are drawn from some of the many superb individual pictures on the reverse.  Considering the hundreds of cards in total, all with highly individual and highly detailed art work on the reverse side, I certainly don't have any problems myself with this.

Below is just a small sample to demonstrate the variety and detail each card displays.

These as you might guess are Items, while the next are potential Allies.

And please don't tell me that there are too many males with droopy moustaches and beards or over made-up and underclad females! 

Apart from the eight decks already mentioned there are several more.  Each Class of Hero has a corresponding Skill Deck.  The quests themselves are called Sagas [lending a Nordic or Icelandic feel to the atmosphere] and come in sets of three cards that take you through four Chapters [i.e. four separate mini-quests] and then the Finale where you take on the supreme Evil Being [think "boss monster" from computer gaming].  These latter are called Ancients and each comes with his/her small deck of Plot cards. 

Here in the top two cards you can see one of the potential Ancients you may be up against and the specific abilities linked with her, while below is one set of Saga cards.

Finally, there is the Night Deck, one of which will be revealed at the end of each day turn.  These contain information as to which location is turned to its Gloom side and usually brings with it some further hindrance for your Heroes!

Among all the many cards, the single significant problem has been with the Location cards in distinguishing the starting side from its reverse when it has been flipped to show that it is now in Gloom.  The response from Tristan Hall has been absolutely typical of all his attention to and concern for players of this game.  In the soon to be released 2nd edition, this has been addressed through constant dialogue with  the gaming community both online and off and ultimately via a democratic vote on the varying ideas of improvement suggested by those gamers.  

Along with the cards come a substantial number of cardboard tokens, 142 in all,  that make up the Gold and Loot that may come your way when an Encounter is successfully won.  

Just some of the Loot 

The final tokens are wooden ones that denote such things as Health, Action pts, Hidden status and Obstacles.  Some have queried their aesthetic appeal and appropriateness,  but personally, I really like these and find their nice chunky quality useful.

As always, binding all the components together and creating harmony out of the many pieces is the rule book.  Like everything else in this game, it is a lavish, quality production of 32 glossy A4 pages in full colour.  Besides reproductions of the cards to help illustrate the explanations of how to use them and what the various symbols mean, there are many additional illustrations there purely to maintain the immersive atmosphere of the game. 

For a game that works almost entirely with cards, it's no surprise that five pages alone are taken up with explaining them.  Be careful how you approach this learning process.  I would suggest that a skim through is best without trying to memorise details will pay dividends. 

Briefly the rule book takes you through
[1] Set Up
[2] Card Anatomy [i.e. the explanations mentioned above]
[3] Actions - the various things you can do and how to do them, each of which costs an Action Point
[4] Deeds - these are supplements to your Actions, often granted by cards or items that you've acquired and most importantly they do not cost Action points.
[5] The Night Phase
[6] Four separate sections that act as very substantial reference material.

Just a few more nasties to contemplate!

Central to play is the Confront Action as this is the main way in which you will garner the necessary gold, loot, assets and cards to accomplish the Sagas and finally take on and hopefully defeat the Ancient One. As with most fantasy games, this involves tests where your Hero chooses one of their abilities to pit against the ability/quality of what you have encountered.  As you might expect encountering enemies is usually the toughest nut to crack.

The hope is that you will be able to test using your strongest ability, but that ability may not necessarily be possessed by your target and so you're forced into using one of your lesser abilities.  Even when this does work in your favour, things do not always go to plan, as when I encountered a weak enemy who needed multiple hits on his health to be overcome!

The other major concept is Keywords, as the completion of each Saga entails a set of keywords to be acquired.  When winning an encounter, the card you have overcome will contain one or more keywords that can be immediately traded in for a reward or the card can be kept to help you later complete the current Saga.  This is one of the more agonising choices you will frequently face: an immediate benefit set against a long-term essential goal. 

Sometimes the current situation will pressingly influence your decision, but too often it doesn't.  As you gain insight through playing the game, you will learn which locations are most likely to generate certain types of Keyword.  If you wish, you can learn these directly from the rules and this certainly will help your progress.  But I must confess that I couldn't resist ignoring that readily available knowledge, so that the experience became much more [for me] genuine and engaging as I truly discovered the nature of this realm of Kilforth.   

There is a great deal to learn, but I found playing even a single game brought most things fairly smoothly into play and understanding.  As a gamer for whom fantasy games are going to be on the periphery,  Gloom of Kilforth has provided an excellent slot.  It combines an aesthetically highly pleasing and immersive world with a reasonable physical footprint for my gaming table.

Set up is very quick and there is no myriad outpouring of plastic pieces to be sorted and later stored - never mind their plaintive waiting to be painted.  As indicated it is the solitaire experience I have found most valuable, especially as it greatly enhances the feeling of exploring and being in a fantasy world.

As mentioned, a 2nd edition will soon be available and for those of you in need of a French edition, these can be bought direct from Nuts Publishing.  Also soon to appear is Tristan Hall's 2nd game Tears To Many Mothers on the topic of The Battle of Hastings.

So, plenty of goodies to get your hands on!

Q&A With D. Ezra Sidran PhD of the Kickstarter PC Game 'General Staff'

http://general-staff.com/


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1366362068/general-staff-game-of-military-tactics-and-wargami/description

1. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work on AI?

I started writing computer games in the ‘80s and I had two #1 games (UMS: The Universal Military Simulator and Designasaurus). Mostly I’m known for commercial wargames. In 2003 I returned to college and earned a doctorate in computer science. My doctoral research (can be downloaded for free here: http://www.riverviewai.com/download/SidranThesis.html) is about tactical artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. I’ve had a number of papers published about AI for wargames (they can be downloaded here: http://riverviewai.com/papers/index.html ). After receiving my doctorate I consulted for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the US Army, the US Department of Defense and the US Office of Naval Research (US Marines).

2. Some of us remember you from the older game series Universal Military Simulator in the 1990s. Please tell us a little about those games, and what you did and didn't like about the finished products.

The three big computer wargames that I wrote were UMS: The Universal Military Simulator, UMS II: Nations at War and The War College. UMS was a #1 game in 1989. UMS2 was named wargame of the year. UMS and UMS2 were both big wargame construction sets that allowed the user to create their own armies, maps and battles.

What I liked about these games was their flexibility and the way that users could adjust every variable used in combat resolution. The problem that I ran into was that these were big ambitious projects and I was constantly bumping up against computers with limited memory in those days. Consequently, for UMS2, we had to use a memory / hard disk paging system that could bog down on old machines. None of that is necessary with today’s computers.

3. I suppose this is the biggest question: Why is 'General Staff' different than other PC wargames, and why should we support your efforts? (This is highly subjective and readers please understand that I am sold on the concept).

General Staff is the first computer wargame construction system in over twenty years. You have complete control and can design armies, maps and battles from the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th century. I have been developing the AI for General Staff for almost 15 years. I sincerely believe that it is the best tactical wargame AI that is available. It is also a learning AI. That is to say, the more you play against it, the better it gets. This is the first commercial implementation of the AI research that I originally did for DARPA.

4. I see that so far your Kickstarter has met two stretch goals, and has brought in over twice the amount of money needed for funding the project. Are there anymore stretch goals to be added? What does the future hold for 'General Staff'?

Kickstarter backers of General Staff are pushing me to add online player vs. player. This is far outside my area of expertise so right now I’m emailing every developer I know asking for advice and suggestions as to how to implement this. I’m getting a lot of good feedback. I know the users want to play against other people around the globe and I promise I’ll do everything I can to implement such a system.

‘Welcome to Centreville’ is an unusual title to be published by GMT Games. My view of their games is mid-to-heavy weight wargames using lots of different game systems. What often sets GMT’s games apart from other publishers for me most is their production quality. In my opinion, many wargame publishers skimp on production quality whereas GMT consistently knocks it out of the park. This game is a departure from the normal wargame I expect from GMT but nothing has been lost from the production quality in this new game from Chad Jensen.

If I had any criticism about component quality, and I am nit-picking here, the ‘cloth’ bag from which you draw new vocation tiles is very light-weight, almost paper-like; but it works and gets the job done. You do have to apply 12 stickers to the wooden pieces before your first play. The board and wooden pieces are all excellent in terms of quality, as are most new hobby games released these days. The theme and the artwork are appealing to the non-wargaming audience. In fact, my wife expressed an interest in playing this game just based on the box art. (disclaimer: my wife doesn’t share my gaming obsession…yet.  Fifteen years in and I still haven’t given up. To play a GMT game with my wife was/is on my bucket-list, so thank-you for making such an accessible game GMT. I just need to get her to step up to Here I Stand next…(spoiler: it's not going to happen!))

I don't know what this material is called but it's not cloth.

Welcome to Centreville, as the title and box-art would suggest, is no wargame. It is a Yahtzee-style dice chucker to compete for the most lucrative buildings, positions and jobs in the titular Centreville. Each player is attempting to increase their Prestige and Wealth above those of the other players to win the game. These two metrics are scored separately on the same track and the lower of these scores is your final score. If you have 67 Prestige but only 20 Wealth your final score is 20.

On your turn, after you’ve rolled the extra-chunky six dice, up to 3 times, you can use the rolled icons to occupy spaces on the board. In general, the most rewarding, or more powerful spaces of the board are available when you roll 3 or more of the required icons. There are 10 different icons that you can roll and each icon can be used individually, or in sets, to place one of your tokens onto the board, or to take a counter that provides a turn-changing ability from the board. Alongside the icons, each die has a different colour which affects which areas of the board those icons can be applied to. Using my basic (and probably wrong) maths there are 36 different icon/colour combinations that you could roll (4 icons are colour agnostic).

Hunky, chunky dice!

As you can see, there are a plethora of options available to players and it proved bewildering to new players on the initial rules run through. However, each player is provided with an excellent player aid, which after half a dozen turns or so makes it abundantly clear what you can do with the icons you’ve rolled. I found, after the briefest explanations of how you win the game, and the basics of what you do on your turn, the game and it’s many options are best explained by playing/explaining the first few turns rather than painstakingly going through each possible outcome.

I am not disposed to like the randomness of Yahtzee-style dice chucking games. In this game however, the number of options and their combinations with the turn-changing abilities mitigates that randomness somewhat and after half-a-dozen plays, it has become my favourite Yahtzee-mechanic game. You’re still limited to the dice you’ve rolled after the third roll (or even four rolls with the Urban Planners or Media tile's special ability) however, there are two special icons on the dice that behave differently from the other symbols which allow and require you to roll tactically to be more effective.

The first 'special symbol' is a question mark icon which duplicates any other icon. If you roll one tree icon and 3 question marks you effectively have 4 trees and can occupy the most expensive property in town.

Icons...icons everywhere. There are 13 distinct board areas on display in this corner of the board.

The second special symbol on the dice is the hourglass symbol which effectively locks that dice in that it cannot be rolled again on your turn. Each hourglass will move the time marker on a space, (potentially triggering a scoring round or adding a disaster tile to the cloth bag) and they provide a small bonus to either Wealth or Prestige for the rolling player.

The number of symbols on each dice is different but you can attempt to control the roll through ‘Master Tiles’ and the question mark symbol. For example, the blue Master Tile allows you to set the Blue die, there are Master Tiles that allow you to set 4 of the 6 dice. The black die has 2 hourglass symbols on it, more than any other die. Rolling and re-rolling the black die has a greater risk and there is no equivalent Master Tile to control it with.

Initial Setup for a four player game

The board itself is a pleasantly compact board that contains a multitude of icons and areas. In general, the ‘town’ is divided into areas which provide Wealth, and areas which provide Prestige. There are other areas which allow players to add new abilities to their standard turn. These new abilities, gained through Vote icons or Education icons allow further control of the dice or the game turn. The standard turn is simple and even in the late game where each player may have 3 or 4 turn-changing abilities a turn can be completed in short order.

However, players that suffer Analysis Paralysis could be catatonic here. Trying to min-max this game I think is best left to Alpha-zero. If your group suffer with any AP players then don’t buy this game, or just refuse to play with them. In this game there is nothing to do between your turns; you can’t start planning until you see the first roll on your turn. I timed (discretely of course) 12 and a half minutes in between one of my turns playing a four-player game with 2 AP players. Playing quickly it could come back around to you in under 5 minutes.

This is an easy game to introduce casual gamers to. It’s a step above the likes of Catan or Dominion and is just as appealing. It may not be as accessible as those games, just because of the number of things you can do with the icons you’ve rolled, but after that initial rules-hurdle has been crossed this is a good game and surprisingly quick game that new or experienced gamers would enjoy; especially if they’re looking for something a bit meatier after their umpty-teenth play of King of Tokyo. I imagine that if you’re reading this, you are the serious-gamer in your group; this may be the ideal game to introduce your 'less-serious' friends to GMT Games. Next stop Fire in the Lake …

After the first scoring phase.

I did try, unsuccessfully, to introduce this to non-gamers. Specifically, my in-laws; it's not something I can recommend trying. It's either a next step game or a mid-weight euro, I can't decide but it's not a game to convert people into gamers. In terms of complexity, it feels about the same as 7 Wonders. There are many more choices in this game and it plays in approximately the same time. In fact, the playtime along with the number of decisions you have to make is the biggest appeal of this game to me. I can't think of many other short(ish) games that provide so many decisions in such a short time.

The adage ‘do what the other players aren’t doing to win a Euro’ doesn’t really apply here. You need to focus equally on your own Prestige and Wealth to be successful. There isn’t much player-interaction aside from the usual worker-placement DOS (Denial of Spaces) attacks and through the voting mechanism. Votes enable you to take the ability provided by a Public Office from another player by rolling more votes, in a particular colour, than they did to win it initially (each public office corresponds to a different coloured die).

After second scoring phase

There are three phases, to this game which each end with a scoring round. The phases end after the time marker has moved a number of spaces which is determined by the number of players there are. If none of you are rolling hourglasses (unlikely), the phase is going to be long. However, after the first scoring round and the first disaster has occurred there will probably be very few rules questions as the iconography on the board and the summary player aid do an excellent job to answer most questions.

Scoring follows the principle of if you have the most or share the most of something with a player you both receive a set number of points. Second most owning player(s) receive significantly less.  This is applied over the board in all its different spaces, and in that, this is the epitome of a point-salad game - everything scores some points. Scoring only stops play for about 5 minutes and it allows you to strategize for the next phase i.e. do you need to concentrate on Wealth or Prestige for the next phase.

Endgame scoring: Yellow wins with 75 points, Brown has 61 points, White has 54 points and Grey just 47 points. (Grey hadn't played before, and Yellow (me) had played and taught it at least 4 times by this point)

Each player also starts with a secret Legacy Tile, in effect, this is a secret mission, revealed at the end of the game, and is only scored in the third and final scoring round. There are 7 Legacy tiles in the game so each game will have a subtly different scoring regime in the final round. In one of my games, the Legacy Tile changed the winner of the game. This was one of those stand-and-shout gaming moments. I love it when games provide sufficient balance and tension throughout the game that the winner is still undecided up until the final reveal of the game. In my experience, there is skill involved in this game, and for equally skilled players there were rarely run-away leaders.

The game claims 2-4 players. Unfortunately, at two players, the rules introduce a third-player bot, which to me, indicate that it’s really a 3-4 player game. I have played with the bot and it is well designed and its actions can be resolved fairly quickly (there are no bot-action flowcharts here. Lookin' at you COIN!) but it was never really a competitive player. The bot's main purpose is to disrupt and deny spaces from the other two players. The concept and implementation of a bot for the intended audience of this game may be a step too far and I don’t really like a bot that isn’t competitive. I know earlier prototypes of this game there were rules to limit board spaces with two players but they’re not in the published rules. I have a feeling the proto-type 2 player rules would be more interesting to me.

Setup from here takes about 5 minutes

The game does play well at both 3 and 4 players, assuming you’re not playing with AP-prone players, but it is a better game with 4 players. It has a small foot-print and plays in just over an hour. It provides enough choices to satisfy any crowd of gamers and is now my go-to take-along-a-game-to-a-game-group game. I am pretty confident that very few gamers will have tried it or even heard of it. I hope that GMT Games' foray into more Euro-style games continues and proves successful for them. I notice Chad Jensen also has Golden Gate Park up on their P500 list, needing some love.

I would like to thank GMT Games for providing this review copy. GMT Games have started shipping this out so you can still get it from their website for $59 or from a few online websites offering a pre-order price here in the UK. I don't think this game will be very common and I think it will be difficult to track down if you don't act soon, but I guarantee it is worth it.

The End of Empire

Napoleon's 1814 campaign

by

George Nafziger 

   

 I first heard about the author through wargaming circles. His absolutely immense compendium of 'Orders Of Battle' (OOBs) were always discussed in gaming forums etc. I am not sure exactly when, but he released his magisterial list free for all to use. This was and is an absolute godsend to wargamers.

 The book, End of Empire, is a tome on the subject. It is so well written that at times it is frustrating. Let me explain. Mr. Nafziger writes so clearly about the events that it is hard to remain calm and non-committal while reading the book. You can easily follow the campaign, so the frustration comes when Marmont, Macdonald, or some other marshal of France, do not do what obviously needs to be done. Time and again, Blucher is on the ropes with Napoleon ready to deliver the knockout blow, when one of his Marshals lets him off the hook. You find yourself, at least I do, imagining what Massena or Davout could have done in the other Marshals' shoes. Do not even get me started with the allies. Their attempts to get to Paris are as embarrassing as watching Bumble Bees in slow motion trying to get back into the hive. The book shows exactly what transpired during Marmont's treachery. Ragusa (Marmont was the Duke of Ragusa) became as widely used in the 19th century for traitor as Quisling was in the 20th.

 The book delves deeply into the different generals and their thinking and reasoning, or lack there of. To me, the writing transports the reader to 1814 and keeps the reader in the grip of the story as well as any non-fiction work can. 

 The book is also liberally supplied with black and white images of the different generals and battles. It is also well supplied with maps so that the reader can follow along with the campaign easily.

 I am waiting, albeit impatiently I might add, for the rest of Mr. Nafziger's Napoleonic books to be released by Helion&Company.

Robert

Book: The End of Empire Napoleon's 1814 Campaign

Author: George Nafziger

Publisher: Helion&Company

Distributor: Casemate Publishers

Caracalla A Military Biography

by

Ilkka Syvänne 

 Why did the names of some of the worst Roman emperors start with the letter 'C', as in, Caligula, Commodus, and Caracalla? I am not talking about the the emperors who only wore the purple for a short time, but those who at least had a few years in their reign.

 I am not a big fan of the Roman Empire; most of my reading is done during the period of the Republic. I have to say that this book is truly an amazing gold mine of military history and everything else you would want to know about the Roman army during this time.

 Caracalla, or more correctly, at birth Lucius Septimus Bassianus, and later Marcus Aurelius Severus Antoninus was described by Gibbon as "the common enemy of mankind". The author of this book cuts through 1800 years of slanted history to give us the real story of the man and his rule. The book even goes into the history before his birth and after his death. 

 This book has worked its way into the top five of my favorite books. For someone who has been reading voraciously for fifty-three years it is quite an accomplishment. The writing is superb, and it still amazes me what the author has packed into a little over three hundred pages. The book is also filled with pictures, some colorized, maps and diagrams. This is a one book encyclopedia of Roman history and military during the middle part of the empire. When you can take a subject that the reader normally doesn't care about and turn it into a page turner, that is something few authors have been able to do. Caracalla has been one of the poster children for despots for many years. To bring his story into perspective and help the reader rethink his views on a much maligned man is not an easy task. To be honest, the author does not try to make him a Boy Scout, but to bring the history of the time alive for the reader to judge for himself what he would have done in the same situation. Since Caligula, the emperor had been a marked man. Except for the time of the 'good' emperors - Trajan to Marcus Aurelius - the man in the gilded seat seems to have had a target on his head. Very few of the Roman emperors died in their beds, at least of natural causes.

Oddly enough, Caracalla's murder seems to be one of the very few where the Roman Army was actually upset over his demise. Usually they were in the plot thick as thieves.

 I cannot praise the book enough. From the illustrations to the diagrams that show how Caracalla tried to emulate the army of Alexander the Great, the information in the book is priceless. 

Robert

Book: Caracalla a Military Biography 

Author: Ilkka Syvanne

Publisher: Pen And Sword

Distributor: Casemate Publishers 

The Battle of Tours

by

Turning Point Simulations

 Turning Point Simulations have decided to use Edward Creasy's 'Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World' as a template to bring these different battles to wargamers. So they have developed a line of games called 'The Twenty decisive Battles of the World', adding some newer battles to the list. These game come in boxed or ziploc form. 

 The first game we will be looking at is the Battle of Tours. The battle took place in 732A.D. between the Franks and a Muslim army from Spain. This is the battle where Charles 'Martel' (the hammer) won his nickname and supposedly saved Western Christendom from the forces of Islam. Charles was the 'Mayor of the Palace' for the Merovingian King of the Franks. This victory, and others, allowed his son to become the King of the Franks and to start the Carolingian dynasty (Charles was Charlemagne's grandfather). 

 These games are smaller, roughly the size of a folio game. The map surprised me because it is actually hard backed and not just thick paper.  The art work on the map is also well done with the elevations etc. very clear. Unfortunately the rule book's pictures of the counters are much sharper and clearer than the actual counters. To me, the background is too dark or the lines of the actual units on the counters are too light. 

 The game rules are only nine pages long, and there is a further two pages of commentary. The back page of the rule book has all of the charts and tables needed for the game. It was designed by the long time and greatly acclaimed wargame designer Richard H. Berg.

 On the first turn, the Muslims move first; after that a die roll is used to determine who has the initiative. The die roll is added to the overall commanders' command range and the higher number wins the initiative.  

 The sequence of play is easy to follow, and is the following:

Determine Activation 

Move Leaders

Activated Units Move, and/or Fire

Activated Units Shock Attack

Inactive Units May try to reform

 The activation is of separate contingents on each side: Heavy Cavalry or Heavy Infantry etc. Each contingent must pass an activation die roll. One ten-sided die is used for the roll. The Muslims must roll a 0-4 and the Franks must roll a 0-5. Whatever contingent your leader is with gets to subtract -1 from the die roll.

 Leaders can actually die by fire or shock attack (this actually happened to the Muslim force). The Muslim Wagon Train unit cannot be attacked, but the die roll for the Muslim troops to try to reform is affected. The die roll has +1 added to it if the wagon train is within the movement allowance of a Frankish unit. It goes up to a +3 if a Frankish unit is adjacent to the wagon train. The wagon train was the Muslim booty from their traipse through Aquitaine.

 The following is a run through of a turn of the game. The ziploc version does not come with a ten-sided die, but the game has two different sets of 0-9 counters.

 The Muslims move first on turn one. The left contingent of the Muslim line has passed its activation roll and it is going to move and attack. The game represents eastern archer warfare well. The Muslim light cavalry/archer units can move fire and then move again. It costs one movement point to fire missiles. Both light cavalry fire and then withdraw. The Franks start in a shield wall so that gives a -2 to the roll, and the light cavalry are one hex away so that gives a +1 to the missile die roll. Both units fail to make a hit on the missile chart and move back from whence they came.

 The two Muslim heavy cavalry units will attack the end of the Frankish heavy infantry line. They get a +1 for having the Muslim leader present (Abd ar-Rahman) and a -1 for attacking heavy infantry. They get a 'disordered' result against the Frankish heavy infantry. The other Muslim heavy cavalry has to attack the other Frankish heavy infantry to its front. It gets an engaged result on the shock attack chart.

 Victory is determined by whichever side accumulates fifteen eliminated units first. There is a victory check at the end of each turn. The games play out much like a game about Hastings. The Frankish player has to know exactly when to break from his shield wall because of all of the defensive bonuses it gives. The Muslim player has to hope for good rolls for his light cavalry to cause disorder in the Frankish ranks that he can then take advantage of with his heavy cavalry.

 If you like the folio type wargames with simple rules and a small counter mix, then this game is perfect for you. I happen to like them, and this game, and I feel it does a great job of reproducing warfare in the eighth century in Western Europe. I believe these types of games have allowed wargaming companies to bring us a much larger amount of battles than would be available without this format. They are also good for the wargamer's wallet.

Robert

The Japanese Battleship Nagato

by

Dmitry Mironov 

 These books by Kagero on warships are subtitled "Super Drawings in 3D", and believe me they are exactly that.The book starts with a short biography of the ship, but the book's main contents are piece by piece computerized drawings of the entire ship from bow to stern. 

 The book also comes with a separate black and white scale drawing of the Nagato. The ship is seen in 1:350th scale, while the main turrets are done in 1:200 scale, and the small guns etc. are done in 1:50th scale. 

 The Nagato was laid down in 1917, and for a few years she and her sister-ship Mutsu were arguably the toughest battleships on the planet. The Nagato's original bow was a problem in heavy seas, and it needed to be completely redesigned.

 The ship was updated at several times during its career. She was actually the flagship of the Japanese first battleship squadron, at least until the Yamato came along. The Nagato was bombed several times during World War II, but she was one of the few remaining Japanese capital ships to survive the war.

 The drawings in the book show the Nagato as she looked in 1944. The only thing I would have liked to see added would be to have a few cross section cut-away drawings of the inside of the ship.

 For the modeller and hobbyist, this book and Kagero's numerous other naval books are a gold mine of information. 

Robert

Book: The Japanese Battleship Nagato
Author: Dmitry Mironov
Publisher: Kagero
Distributor: Casemate Publishers

 

After a reviewing a couple of heavier wargames, I decided to spend some time with something a bit, ahem, lighter weight. Light Apprentice is a "comic book RPG" that has been available for tablets for a while and recently got a PC release. I thought this game was worth doing a quick review on because it tries out several neat ideas, though the final product left room for improvement.

"Comic Book RPG" perfectly describes the format of the game. The story is told through comic book style panels and dialogue bubbles that appear one after another. The game then seamlessly transitions into gameplay using the same comic book panels. Moving around and interacting with environments is done in the style of point-and-click adventure games. Click on a door and your characters will run through into the neighboring comic panel, which works really well. There are puzzles to solve, but they are mostly of the simple "find the missing gear and put it in this slot" variety. There are also a few secrets scattered around if you take the time to really inspect each scene. 

As with any comic book, the art style is important here. Light Apprentice succeeds in having a style all of its own, which can be beautiful at times. As someone who does enjoy reading comic books and graphic novels from time to time, I enjoyed this aspect of the game probably more than anything else.

As you explore the game world, you will often run into enemies that must be fought to progress through the area. These encounters are pretty basic turn-based combat endeavors. The key twist being that every action involves a simple quick time event that will determine how powerful your attack, healing spell, etc. is. These are very simple, as the game was originally designed for tablets. Each one is distinct and can feel somewhat rewarding when done perfectly. However, I wouldn't blame you for getting tired of them after a while.  Your characters begin with only a couple of options in combat, but over time gain quite a few different abilities. At the normal difficulty you will need to make use of your abilities efficiently or else you will have trouble with most encounters. You can't just spam basic attacks over and over and expect to have much success. In the campaign there is no opportunity to grind levels, which means some encounters were extremely frustrating until I discovered that it is possible to access a series of "quests" (basically just additional combat encounters) from the main menu. These let you fight various enemies and get more experience and loot. You will probably want to do these to make the main story line much easier to progress through. 

The story and dialogue is where the game lost me really. This feels and looks like a game for kids, which is fine, and something that I can take into consideration as I play. However, the way the game tries to convey it's message feels like I'm reading a political blog post written by a teenager. The game tackles the issue of environmentalism, which is something I praise it for since that is an important issue to me and uncommon in the gaming world. That said, the game is more than a little heavy handed in how it goes about this. After your character wakes up in a world of magic and monsters, you will be called upon to stop a greedy corporation from fracking for shale oil and polluting the local water supply. There's no metaphor here, that is literally the situation. For me, it's way too direct and breaks any sense of immersion in the world. Give me some kind of allegory that fits the setting, instead of shoehorning real world headlines into a fantasy universe.

Overall, Light Apprentice does a lot of interesting things. It has point-and-click adventure elements, a comic book style that is wonderfully adapted for gaming purposes, and a fresh theme. However, all of these elements are executed in a fashion which feels just a little too childish and simple for me personally. It's not a bad game by any means, but there probably is not nearly enough meat here for experienced RPG players. I hope to see the developer continue with this series and grow both as an artist and story teller. This game series is planned to have two more volumes, and I would be interested to see how those turn out.

Light Apprentice is available on Steam, and also on iOS and Android tablets.

Official Website: http://www.lightapprentice.com/

- Joe Beard