Friendly forces pull out of Eisenbach

When I wrote about World at War:  Eisenbach Gap last month, I said I wasn't ready to put it up for trade just then.  Well, I'm somewhat sad to report that I did give up on it.  I put it in the mail today.  I never could get past the issues that put me off from the very beginning.

I really did want to like it.

New acquisitions since the WoWpocalypse

One of the things I'd been doing in this space was running down my new game acquisitions.  While I was obsessively playing the WoW, I still managed to pick up a handful of new things -- I just didn't write about them.  That lapse has been a thorn in the side of my sense of order, a thorn whose pricking I will suffer no longer!

First, a quick thought on "collecting," since this is, plain and simple, a post describing my collection.  I actually don't think of myself as a "collector," really, but:  the facts are the facts.  I buy a lot of games that, on some level, I know I probably won't actually play (or at least, play much).  I derive pleasure from the actual owning of the things, apart from and in addition to the pleasure that comes from their use.  I guess that's a pretty reasonable definition of "collector," whether I like it or not.  So there.  I guess I'm a collector, but a half-assed collector, to be sure.

Anyway:  here, in no particular order, are the things that I've picked up but not mentioned previously.

World at War:  Eisenbach Gap.  The Cold War era is a little under represented in my collection (there's that word again!) and that's a little surprising to me.  It's the era during which I grew up, and I find the potential military conflicts of the age absolutely fascinating.  Accordingly, WaW is a title I've always intended to pick up at some point.  I finally put in a request for it as one of the two games I asked for at Christmas.  The game covers a fictional invasion of the West by the USSR in the mid-80's. It's a tactical-level game, but at 1 counter = 1 platoon (rather than 1 counter = 1 vehicle).  It has had a lot of positive buzz, and I definitely see the appeal -- it's a very nice looking game, among other things.  It hasn't exactly grabbed me yet, though.  I've been through the rules pretty thoroughly, and they could be tighter, frankly.  Still, I'm looking forward to getting into this.

Fields of Fire. This was my other (gaming) Christmas present.  Its reputation is that it is a highly complex, highly innovative solitaire infantry/tactical game.  It spans three eras, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.  It also has the reputation of having an extremely difficult-to-grasp rule book.  I've done little more than take the shrink off this one at this point.  I'm not going to dig into it until I am in the mood for a major project.

Lock 'n Load:  Band of Heroes.  (Note well:  not "Lock and Load," lordy no; one presumes that wouldn't be "keepin' it real."  Or whatever.  And I would love to have sat in on the production meeting wherein it was decided that the omission of the "a" in "and" was worthy of denoting with an apostrophe, but the "d"--well, the "d" can just hit the damned road.)  I got a used copy of this game in a BGG math trade.  I gave up my copy of the WWII version of Wings of War--a game which I'd also gotten in a math trade.  (Hello, my name is Greywing, and I have a problem.)  I apparently have embarked upon a mission to own every WWII tactical board game except Advanced Squad Leader, and this acquisition fits into that plan (?) nicely.  Nothing really to say about this one beyond that; I've done barely more than open the box.

Patton's Best.  This is another game I got second-hand in a BGG math trade.  I traded away my copy of the Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition Player's Handbook for it.  (Have I mentioned that I wasn't crazy about 4E?) It's a solitaire game that I've sort of been looking for for a while now.  I really like the look of this one -- it's a detailed simulation of the experiences of a tank crew in WWII Europe, down to the level that each individual crew member is represented.  I have every intention of learning this one in the near term.  This was an excellent trade for me, which broke a streak of less-than-great luck.  My copy is complete and in really good shape for a game first published over 20 years ago.

Midway.  I won an auction for this one for a pretty low price (under $20 including shipping).  I bid on this as kind of a lark, actually.  I thought I'd take a flyer on trying to get one of the real classics of the genre, and it worked out.  This is, right now, definitely in the "have it just to have it" category, but who knows?  I might actually set it up at some point, since the subject matter is the most interesting (to me) single battle in history.  Read Shattered Sword!

So, there you go.  I've got one order in right now, for the deluxe reprint of Twilight Stuggle, and after that -- scout's honor! -- I'm cutting back on new purchases.  Seriously.  The goal for the year is to get my Warmachine on.  Beyond that, I need to seriously cut into the my number of owned-but-unplayed games, and cut down on the new acquisitions!

More BGG math trade stuff

In a hope-renewing display of international cooperation, the postal services of the United States and Canadia worked together to take for-freaking-ever to deliver me my last installment of games from the last BGG math trade I participated in. I finally got the box last week, though, and finally sat down to check them out over the last couple of days.

For this lot, I traded away an unopened copy of Strike South, one of the Second World War at Sea series of games by Avalanche Press. I still have three other SWWaS games on the shelf (Bomb Alley, Midway, Eastern Fleets). I like the system well enough, but Strike South's specific subject matter never really grabbed me, I guess. I picked it up as part of a bundle, and I'd had it up for trade for quite a while. In return, I got a copy of one of the introductory Advanced Tobruk System ("ATS") games, 101st Screaming Eagles (by Critical Hit), and Red Parachutes (also, coincidentally, by Avalanche).

Red Parachutes was published in the mid-90's and is an unapologetically old-school hex-and-counter-fest. It is a big ole game, with just under 1,000 counters. Honestly, the chances of me ever setting this thing up, let alone actually playing it, are pretty close to nil. If I had infinite time, that'd be one thing, but I don't. So I just don't see how this ever makes it to the top of the priority list. I'll probably put this one back up for trade.

I traded for this lot, though, because of the other game I got, the ATS intro. I've had my eye on that system for a while, and I'm happy to finally have one of the games. Any tactical-level WW2 game (miniatures or otherwise) is automatically going to get a second look from me. I've made peace with the fact that I'm never going to get into the genre's granddaddy, Advanced Squad Leader. I've read a lot about ASL, and I've come to the conclusion that it's just ... too much. No knock on the system itself or its adherents; I'm just pretty sure it's not for me. ATS has always looked like an intriguing alternative, though, with a lot of the meat and depth of ASL -- but a fraction of the overhead.

The Screaming Eagles game comes with a rules folder for the "Basic Game," which is an abbreviated subset of the full-on ATS rules. There's a reference card with the handful of tables used in the basic game, four scenarios (printed separately on two cards), an 11" x 17" map, and way more counters than you actually need to play any of the included scenarios. The production quality is adequate, but nothing to shout about. The counters are on nice stock and are pretty utilitarian, but they do have a little bit of color to them. They also have drawings of men, guns, whatever, instead of just NATO symbols. That's a big plus in my book.

The rules are just four pages long -- albeit, four pages that are dense with a very small font. Still, there's not that much there, and it's not too hard to get through them. They strike me as generally fairly well written, but I definitely think there are a couple of passages that could have been more clearly worded. Anyway, I've read through them at least a couple of times now, and I don't believe there's anything in there too difficult to grasp, or particularly groundbreaking for a gamer with a bit of experience. Play is broken down into movement, firing, and close assault phases ("segments" here), units have movement points, troops taking casualties must make morale checks, etc., etc. I'd say overall, it feels like pretty comfortable and familiar ground.

One thing I definitely like about the system right off the bat is its abandonment of the IGO-UGO model. Players alternate activating individual units or stacks, which generally may only move or shoot in a turn. A game turn continues until both players have activated all of their units (that they want to). So, every unit has the potential to act every turn, but, again, generally they can only move or shoot, not both.

I also like the opportunity fire rules. Basically, every time a unit spends a movement point (either by actually moving or just pivoting, in the case of vehicles), any enemy within LoS may shoot at it, if the firing unit hasn't already been activated during the present turn. Taking an opportunity shot counts as the firing unit's activation for the turn, so it is by no means a "free" shot. There's certainly nothing particularly innovative about this system, but I do like the way the rules seem to strike a balance of making moving in the open a highly risky proposition while not turning opportunity fire into a completely game-dominating mechanism.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this trade, and I'm anxious to set up ATS for a solitaire session or two.

BGG math trade goodness

I'm a regular participant in math trades on BoardGameGeek. More often than not, my submissions go untraded. Last week, though, a trade closed and I had two successful trades. I got the first of the two incoming packages in the mail this afternoon.

I picked up two small games, Sergeants! On the Eastern Front and Battle for Hill 218, for one game that I had absolutely zero interest in. (Incidentally, it was a game that I'd gotten in a previous math trade; I have no idea why I put it on a want list).

Sergeants! is an introductory-level hex-and-counter game on a tactical scale, pitting Germans against Russians in WWII (as is probably obvious from the title). I've heard reasonably good things about it, but, frankly, it will probably end up on the shelf for a while.

Hill 218 is a card game. I've heard very good things about this one as well, and I've been looking for a nice self-contained (i.e., not collectible) card game for a while. I've got high hopes for this one, and I hope to get it to the table soon.

I'd call this a decent, but certainly not spectacular, trade for me. The games I got were pretty small, and I'm only marginally interested in one of the two, but my subjective valuation of the game I traded away was pretty close to zero. So if I end up getting any play at all out of Hill 218, I definitely will have come out ahead.