Nevsky: A Review, Or How OCS Ruined My Life

Let me preface this review by stating that I've never really been interested in either the ancient or medieval eras of conflict: my area of expertise are mostly centred around either World War II or the American Civil War (you might wonder how a Brit like me might get an interest in the latter, and I only have a single word as a response: playmobil). The only game I ever bought that featured a pre-19th century conflict was Falling Sky, and that particular purchase was mostly due the game being part of the COIN series rather than any sort of intrinsic interest in the era. As such I am not very well read in terms of medieval warfare, vassalage and logistics, and thus I will avoid making appeals to historicity within this review. The corollary to this is that I am not very well versed in the history and development of wargames concerning this era either, and as such I will only attempt to describe the game from my own perspective and knowledge of wargames. With this dreary preamble out of the way, let's get to the meat of the review.

Let me just put it out there: Nevsky is a good game. It has single-highhandedly made me interest in an era of history that I had no previous interest in. It has made me interested in researching more about the conflict that it tries to simulate. This is usually a sign that the game has captivated me enough that I want to see how the actions and events that occurred during the game match up with the actual historical events of the battle. The last few examples of this phenomenon for me were Reluctant Enemies, where shortly after playing it I picked up a book about this most unlikely of battles, and Burma II, which did the same for the Burma theatre of World War II.

Those two examples are actually more relevant to this review than they appear to at first, because what convinced me to buy Nevsky in the end was the fact that it had a deep interest in portraying the logistics and gathering of victuals that a campaign in eastern Europe would entail. And it's exactly the importance that Nevsky places on the logistics of medieval warfare that really make it stand out for me.

This ties in with the heading that I created for this review: although saying that OCS ruined my life might be a tad hyperbolic, it did certainly ruin an aspect of my life, that being wargaming. After getting but just a taste of the sweet ambrosia of "how the fuck am I going to fuel and supply all of my units properly", and the operational tempo created by actually having to track supplies being brought to the front, it kind of left a sour taste in my mouth for other wargames: they didn't feel much more than front-pushers, with supplies largely guaranteed unless you were surrounded or had the enemy between you and the source of supply. OCS made me really appreciate the advantages of simulation at the operational scale, with a focus on logistics.

And Nevsky provides that (although it's unclear if it is to be considered an operational, grand operational or strategic level game, the distinction within wargaming of those genre being a bit fuzzy, especially when straying out of the comforting blanket of World War II games).

The Tuetons and Novgorodian Rus' at the start of the war

To be clear, there aren't many similarities between OCS and Nevsky. Nevsky features a point to point map, it has random events and some card play and deck management which gives it a distinctively GMT tint, and the battle system within the game is quite simplified in order to speed up the process and make it as quick playing as possible, while still trying to model the relative qualitative difference between the troops of Novgorod and the Tuetons (and, having had experience with trying to balance board games, I can only imagine how many iterations had to be attempted, and how much fat had to be cut in order to arrive at the combat system in its present state). 

So if the differences between OCS and Nevsky, how is a comparison valid, or even relevant when discussing the two games? The answer to that is, admittedly, a cop-out on my part: when I play either, the feeling of playing them is the same. When I'm playing OCS, I am always worrying about how my troops will move and with which supplies and how I will continue to support them in either offensive or defensive actions.

Nevsky provides a similar feeling of trouble, and this is almost entirely in part due to the interconnected puzzle that is the logistic system within the game. There are only three times when you need to feed an army: when you move, when you fight or when you siege. As long as an army remains stationary, it does not require food to survive, but an army which is motionless is a useless one, of course. There are many ways to provide victuals to your armies: they can simply forage the area they are in, but this is only effective in summer, where foraging options open up to include enemy territory. They can ravage an enemy area, and potentially gain both loot and provisions, and although this provides victory points as well as food, it depletes that area potentially forever: a ravaged enemy land might not be able to provide your troops in a future campaign, since it cannot be used to forage, even in summer. The last option is having enough transports to trace a path back to your seat (essentially your head quarters), but this is not always possible, especially due to the shifting seasons.

War only brings ruin to this land and its people.

Transports are another crucial part of the game.  They are necessary in order to bring your hard-earned provisions around with you, or to trace back supply. The issue is that transports are limited to specific paths, and these also change according to the season. In summer, carts can use trackways, while boats navigate the rivers and lakes that crisscross the region. Once winter comes, however, the only transport available is sleds, but they work equally well within the frozen rivers as on land. However, once the thaw sets in and the land turns to mud, both carts and sleds are useless, and as such the only useful transports are the boats that ply the rivers. 

This use of transport leads to a map that rapidly changes from season to season: your well supplied troops might suddenly find themselves with no means to transports their food once the winter is over, simply because they have no means to build boats and are stuck deep in enemy lines. This was the experience that I had with my first game: a state of perpetual surprise at just how badly I had handled the food requirements and lives of the people fighting for me.

But, strangely enough, the game can create situations in which starving your soldiers might not be the worst thing in the world. This is closely tied to another interesting feature of the game: the systems that simulate fealty and vassalage within the game. Each side has access to 6 armies throughout the game, each with different levels of ability and fealty. These armies have to be called up by other lords that are already fighting, and even if they do show up (which is not guaranteed), they will only serve you for a limited time before going back home to recuperate their troops. Armies will only stay for a certain number of turns, which varies from lord to lord, and this can only usually be extended by paying them coin or loot (although the latter has to be brought home for it to be something accepted by the lords as payment). Thus, each raised army has a clock counting against it, encouraging you to send it to the fray where it will hopefully gain the coin it needs to remain fighting. 

The Tuetons conquer while raids hit Estonia and Livonia

Normally, when the term of service of a lord is over, it is removed from the map and after some time, it is able to return for another tour of duty, but there are ways to decrease the number of turns of service and, if the situation is drastic enough, to remove the lord permanently from the battle, never to be called to service again. This usually happens due to battles lost, or because of missing provisions, but as I mentioned before, the latter might even be to your advantage. Maybe pushing the attack even without provisions is paramount rather than wasting time trying to gather food and as long as the battle is won, the fact that your army will leave the very next turn is not so important, relatively speaking. 

These options to push your troops beyond their endurance really adds an element to the game, and creates risky dilemmas baked into the rules of Nevsky. The fact that you cannot reliably keep armies on the board also ties in with one of the most brutal victory conditions in the game: if you have no lords left on the board, you lose, no matter how many victory points you accrued. Did your opponent raid your hinterlands and gained an overwhelming number of victory points? The war is not lost, as long as you crush each and every one of his armies.

All these elements, these interlocking mechanisms that all tie in together, are what really makes the game shine: they all join together to make a puzzle that will leave you scratching your head at every turn: how can I get this army back home to be able to muster more transports for the coming winter? How do I keep supplies flowing to this siege? Do I send an army filled with victuals and transports just in order to feed the besiegers (who cannot move in order to not break the siege)? Or maybe, since it's summer, it's best not to ravage the area around, and just slow the tempo of the siege by regularly having entire turns just dedicated to gather food. And it's answering these questions, through trial and experimentation, that really make me interested in analysing and study this game as thoroughly as possible.

But you know what is even more wonderful about this game? It's that I've written almost 1600 words and I've yet to even explain about the other interesting mechanisms in the game. How, for example, having a large number of armies does not necessarily mean that you'll be able to move them all in a turn. Or how the deck system makes you choose between adding powerful capabilities to you and your armies, or leaving them in as a random event. But I wrote this review to focus on what I thought was the most important and interesting element within Nevsky: the logistic mechanisms nestled directly in the middle of the beating heart of the game.

So do I recommend Nevsky? Almost definitely. Even if you aren't interested in the period, or the conflict, I would recommend at least trying it. And it will be all worth it when, during your first game, winter finally hits and you realise that through your own mismanagement, you have left an army dangerously exposed. And hopefully, that moment will be one that you will be looking with fondness later on, much as I did while exploring this deep, interesting game.

The Politics of Compromise - A Partial Review of Meltwater and This Guilty Land

I'm going to preface this review with a bit of warning: I'm going to go political within this article, and the following words are not going to be a thorough review of the games mentioned within the title. Currently I have yet to play This Guilty Land and hence a thorough review of the game would be incomplete and unrewarding both for me to write and for you to read. Hence the game review elements, as limited as they will be, will mostly focus on Meltwater, which I have played and enjoyed. If you are here as a means to simply find out if Meltwater is worth purchasing and playing, then my heartfelt recommendation is yes: this will save you from having to read my half-formed thoughts on the politics of the two games and how they handle the subject of compromise.

With the preamble dealt with, let me set the scene. Throughout the years I have always been interested in the conjunction of theme and mechanisms, which several years ago a group of fellow board game enthusiasts decided to call "conveyance". A high degree of conveyance was only possible when the actions that you perform within the game actually make you feel like the character that you are portraying. The foremost examples that we used were usually reserved for the games of Vlaada Chvatil, especially Space Alert, a game in which the interactions between the players feel very similar to the ones that you would expect within the crew of a starship beset on all sides from both natural and alien threats.

Although I think the framework of conveyance is still useful nowadays, I think it can be relatively misleading when trying to analyse games that use mechanisms as a means to relaying a message, rather than simply attempting to feel immersive within their fictional universe. This is especially true for Meltwater and This Guilty Land: the experience in both of these games is not to immerse yourself into the role of a post-apocalyptical general or an abstract concept, but to give highly charged political message about the nature of man.

I will be the first to admit that this might appear, at first, to be a quite grandiose claim. Board games are seen by many to be relatively apolitical pieces of media, but I think this actually deflects from the fact that many board games are political without necessarily attempting to be, or are even politicised by the fact that they attempt to whitewash or minimise the aspects of history that would be somewhat uncomfortable to talk about when playing a tabletop game.

Games that revolve around the creation of a medieval town (which, as an aside, I now use of an example of the creative paucity and malaise that is currently affecting the realm of euro games) usually don't focus on the politics and realities of feudal life. Games about international trade during the colonial era don't usually pay too much attention about the exploitation of native populations that allowed trade to flourish during that era. Wargames focusing on World War II don't usually try to simulate the logistics and manpower requirements of running concentration camps. I could keep going on with such examples but I think the point has been made.

This is not to say that every game should have a scathing politicised critique of the era that the theme of the game is representing, and in most situations, including such subjects could rightly be criticised for making light of subjects in a way that would be too simplified to truly make justice of a complex political situation. One example of this is the game Archipelago, which includes elements of native revolution, but does so in a badly managed way that leaves it wide open to criticism in terms of how it handles those aspects.

Yet the examples I gave two paragraphs above cannot be considered to be completely apolitical as some wish they would be. The lack of a message is a message within itself, as it creates a distorted view of the era. Although I'm not actually going to review the game in any depth, at least within the article, another Hollandspiele game, An Infamous Traffic, works well to dispel some of the simplified assumption about how trade operates within the context of the colonial and imperial era of history.

Going back to original thesis of this essay, let's analyse what I think the intended messages are of Meltwater and This Guilty Land. For me, both games try to showcase what happens when opposed groups of people are either unable to compromise, or find it impossible to reach a compromise due to irreconcilable beliefs. The "for me" at the start of the last sentence is very deliberate: even a cursory read of the wonderful developer commentary within the rulebook for This Guilty Land (which I do recommend reading if you get your hands on it), or a read through the wonderful developer diaries of Meltwater shows that to distil the messages of both games into such a simplistic framework is extremely reductionist. However, the messages regarding compromise from the two games are the ones that had the most impact for me personally.

The reason for this is the current political climate in regards to deplatforming. The arguments around this subject is that with the resurgence of extreme right wing political thoughts within the last decade, should we debate right wing ideologues in public spaces? The arguments for allowing them a platform is that when debated in such a way allows people to oppose their views and show them to either be based on false premises or that they are being argued in bad faith. The other end of the argument in favour of deplatforming says, however, that platforming them allows those movements to gain legitimacy and provides them free advertising, and that even if they appear to "lose" the debate, it is unlikely that they would be dissuaded from their beliefs (and that regardless of  what is said, the people that participate in such debates against the extreme right have more to lose than to win, as explained within the alt-right playbook series of videos).

As you might have guessed, my own personal opinion on the matter leans towards the deplatforming side of the equation. The criticism towards this stance is that it curtails freedom of speech (a topic that I don't really want to discuss within this particular article), and that it shows both a failure and unwillingness to compromise with your political opponents.

This is, of course, entirely true: deplatforming does not even allow the glimmer of the possibility to compromise. But the argument is this: is compromise always a  universal good? And to this I would argue that the answer is no. This is especially true in situations where, in order to compromise, you would have to create allowances for an ideology that is morally repugnant. This is as true when debating a white supremacist nowadays as it was in the 19th century when abolitionists debated slave-owners in pre-civil war era USA.

This is not to say that the two situations explained above are exactly alike. During the 1930s, some historians attempted to liken their current political turmoil to the last days of the Roman Empire, a notion that had traction during that era but was subsequently dis-proven later on. The structural and moral divisions within the US prior to the Civil War bears little resemblance to the structural and moral divisions present nowadays, but some of the themes still bear some comparison.

This Guilty Land holds, as one of its principal messages, that true compromise between the abolitionist and slave-owners was impossible and that any attempts to mollify the slave-owners just lead to a continuation of the status quo and that thus the Civil War itself was inevitable. A more thorough analysis of this is present within the interview at the end of the games' rulebook, which directly argues for all of the points above.

This argument is compelling when someone analyses the era in question: for the south, owning slaves was not only an economic system, but also a political system that allowed them to exert influence throughout the country. The era prior to the Civil War was one replete with potential compromises created and then unceremoniously ignored by southern politicians, principally exemplified by both the first and second Missouri Compromises.

One argument that can be made is that the above analysis is too based on modern sensibilities and from our current understanding that slavery is immoral, and thus that compromise is not inherently wrong if it unclear what side is seen to be morally correct. The issue with this is that even during that time there were strong moral arguments against slavery at the time by abolitionists, and that many large countries had already opposed themselves to slavery, principally the United Kingdom.

So to say that slavery at the time was accepted because people didn't know better doesn't really account for the rise of abolitionist movement, and how these movements affected the people within the US: this, to me, is most exemplified by the lyrics to "John Brown's Body", a song which was popular within the Union army at the time.

The driving point is therefore that true compromise is impossible under certain moral scenarios, and thus that any attempt to reach compromise either leads to a continuation of an untenable status quo. So if This Guilty Land is principally concerned with the impossibility of compromise, how does this tie in with Meltwater's view of compromise?

To answer this question, we must first analyse what the game has to say about compromise. One important thing to note when it comes to Meltwater is that the game pointedly does not say anything about the causes of the apocalyptical war that it simulates, or who within that sphere is morally right or wrong. This is an interesting parallel to This Guilty Land, in which the impossibility of compromise is due to a specific, direct issue. Meltwater, instead, attempts to showcase the results of a failure to compromise between two sides, and how these two sides can therefore be locked in a self-destructive dance where neither can compromise for the fear that this would create an advantage for the other.

This creates interesting parallels when compared to This Guilty Land when compared to Meltwater. In the former game, compromise is impossible and victory is meaningless: as the rulebook sets it, no matter who wins politically, the Civil War always happens, as a political victory by either sides radicalises the other just like it happened in real life.

Meltwater, on the other hand, showcases a situation where the incentives to compromise are only present when the situation becomes hopeless for either side, and the compromise in question is a complete abdication of power. By that point, however, victory itself has lost its value: the fighting that allowed you to gain supremacy also destroyed the very place that you want to inhabit, making a victory against your opponent in of itself meaningless.

The ideal compromise would be thus to simply put your arms down and not fight in the first place, something that one of the designer diaries indicates to leave enough food and water for both (and any upcoming refugees) to survive. Yet within the confines of the games, this compromise is impossible, much like in the minds of some generals during the Cold War, any such compromise would be impossible, even if this lead to large scale death on both sides.

Thus, on one side, the message of one of the games is that it is impossible to compromise, and to compromise in certain situations just leads to an abominable status quo that cannot keep. On the other hand, we have a game in which an inability to compromise leads to situations where this mindset itself leads to abominable situations that would not have occurred if the possibility of compromise was present.

Although at first glance this can appear to be differing positions, the messages themselves are not actually contradictory: both revolve around a situation where the only solution is the abdication of power (even in Meltwater, since a complete bilateral agreement seems unlikely based on the history of the US and USSR). If the only possibility of compromise lies within the complete abdication of your position in favour of your opponent, no compromise is possible.

In this way, the two games almost complement each other: while one showcases how compromise can lead to the continuation of an untenable status quo, the latter showcases what happens in the aftermath of a situation in which this inability to compromise can lead to situations in which only one side can ultimately be victorious.

But even this apocalyptic view of the world creates unresolved issues: in Meltwater, victory usually means the destruction of your own means of survival. In the context of the Civil War, there were plenty of unresolved issues that, although slavery itself was over, still lead to an era of segregation, mostly due to the failures of the reconstruction era of US politics.

So is the final point that compromise is impossible and should never be attempted? The main driving point is not that compromise is always impossible, but that compromise is not always an overwhelmingly good all of the times, especially if it attempts to retain a status quo that is oppressive to a certain group of people. Although reconciliation of beliefs and coming together of distinct views is something that in certain situations is to be lauded, compromising with oppressive forces, especially when they have economical or political reasons to continue that oppression is not only impossible, but also inadvisable.

BattleCON Wardlaw Guide

I AM THE (WARD)LAW!

Alright ladies and gentlemen, you know what time it is! Men want to be him, ladies want to be WITH him. He's the one, the only, the amazing, cue drum roll, Wardlaw "The Law" O'Brien! Thank you, thank you, you are too kind.

Of course, no one can really reach the heights of Wardlaw, his raw power, his raw charm, his raw cunning, his raw ability to eat dozens of hot dogs in a single sitting. But with these little tips, maybe YOU can at least try to emulate a tiny fraction of his brilliance.

Part 1: Hit 'em with the clothesline

Alright so, you are middle in the fight, right, and your oppoent is just standing there. What do you? Well, the strategy is as simple as it is cunning: you wait for them to make a mistake and BAM!, you've hit 'em with a Massive Clothesline. That'll send 'em sprawling, and if there's a wall behind them (or the ringside, or whatever else), you can even hit 'em for half their health. And if their back are against the wall, and you can't clothesline 'em, then BAM!, you just Charge 'em instead. There's no escape from Wardlaw once the big man has you in his sights. Or maybe you Smack 'em Down and crash them into the corner. And once you got 'em in the corner, there's no escape from this Dangerous villain!

Part 2: No one puts Wardlaw in the corner!

But what if THEY put you in the corner? Well, just bounce off that wall to gain some speed and then smack 'em some! And maybe they are far away, and that's when you hit 'em with a crushing Overhead. So really, corners for Wardlaw are win/win/win situations, cause of course Wardlaw wins 3 times MORE effectively than anyone else.

Part 3: The Pain Train has no brakes

Maybe you let your opponent get a false sense of safety by letting him hit you a few times. But really, he was playing into your perfect plan all along. You create some distance, right? And then BAM!, you hit 'em with the Pain Train. Or maybe you flip off a wall and crush 'em with a Double Moustache Buster, a move that's sure to make all but the most hardened spectators swoon in pure delight.

Anyway, that's all you need to know about the fighting techniques of the great man himself. Just remember the ABCs: Always Be Clotheslinin'. With those words, you can't lose, and that's a guarantee!* And if you DO lose, your opponent was probably cheatin', so it doesn't count!

*(guaranteenotactuallyreedemeablepleasereadtermsandconditions)

The Stone Sculptor - A Story from the World of Indines

I wrote the following as one of the social goals for the BattleCON Unleashed Kickstarter in order to unlock new characters: it was interesting writing fiction for the first time in a long while, especially set in a lore that I don't know all that much about!

The town of Canath, residing within the plains of Relecour, was tiny, no more than a dot on a map. The only reference that Marmelee had managed to find regarding it had been concerning some of the crafting and merchant fairs that had occurred there, but that had been long ago.

Karin had deemed silly all the research into every little town and village that met their path, but to Marmelee it was important: the history of the world wasn’t only there to preserve the mighty deeds of nations, kings and rulers, but also the commonplace plight of regular people, living out their lives while much more grandiose events occurred around them. Canath was the sort of town that would have only risen to fame if a famous battle had occurred near it and alas, it had failed to gain even that distinction.

Yet history, and its effect, permeated the place. A cursory look at the main features of the town showed that it had started small, had rapidly expanded and, upon reaching the zenith of its fame, slowly faded into obscurity: this could be easily judged by the rather oversized, yet now abandoned homes that dotted the perimeter of the settlement. Canath had contracted down to a smaller core, leaving its edges to the ravages of time and nature: falling apart, overgrown, or a mixture of both.

While Karin had went off to gather necessary supplies, Marmelee had taken her notebook and asked some of the few remaining townspeople about the history of Canath. The replies had been fairly standard, echoing the tales of many other struggling communities: a curse had afflicted the town, people had disappeared (more oft than not, further enquiry merely revealed that they had left the town out of their own volition), and the town had struggled with no influx of fresh blood. The main square also alluded to glories gone and lost, with a weather-worn statue in the middle of it, an inscription below it reading “Marek, last of the Canath Family”.

Further questioning elucidated the meaning of the plinth: the Canath had been the original founders of the town, a rich merchant family. The statue had been raised shortly after the loss of the last member of the lineage, although most could not remember what had actually happened to him.

There was little more to Canath: by all common reasoning, it was likely that its decline had simply been due to one of the nearby city-states surpassing it economically. Having finished visiting most of the town as the mid-day sun arose, Marmelee reflected sadly that even in an historical volume of her own writing (or, if she ever felt so bold, maybe an auto-biography), Canath would be little more than a footnote. The little stories, much like Canath itself, are always lost to the ravages of time.

Marmelee made her way back to the Inn. The Inn's location was another clue pointing towards the relative unimportance of Canath, residing as it did near a crossroad. If people had had motivation to actually visit the town itself, such a busy Inn would have been nestled within the heart of the town. Instead, the original innkeeper had decided to build it much closer to the source of traffic.

As her thoughts wandered, something caught Marmelee's eye. Near the perimeter of Canath, a small wisp of smoke rose from a lonely chimney: a single house still inhabited amongst the other deserted abodes, like a single flame in the middle of an icy wasteland. Although initially reluctant to disturb whoever lived there, Marmelee still had plenty of time before she was due back, and it wouldn't hurt to quiz someone else about the history of the town.

A small alley lead to the house, flanked by wild brambles and vines. As she finally caught full sight of the defiant house, she could see that it was being maintained, although time still had had its effect on the outer walls. Nature, on the other hand, had been held at bay: many of the encroaching brambles had been neatly cut off before they reached the walls, and a plain yet tidy garden could be spied behind a gate.

Marmelee hesitantly knocked on the door, but as soon as she did, the door slowly crept open, the lock on it seemingly having rusted to uselessness. The inside of the house was relatively dark: even near midday, the tightly packed housing and foliage meant that not a lot of natural light filtered through. The entrance hall was fairly standard: old chairs, a sofa, shelves stacked with books (the latter of which did pique her interest).

“H-Hello? Anybody home?” said Marmelee, in a whisper that almost defeated the purpose of the question.

The only response was silence. A few seconds passed, with Marmelee vacillating between closing the door and heading back now, or waiting a few seconds and then doing the same. Something caught her eye, however: one of the walls was covered by countless statues, each depicting a different animal: a trussa there, a dog (or maybe a wolf?) and other animals native to the lands of Indines.

Even from a distance, Marmelee could see that the craftsmanship was of the highest order, an attention to detail that seemed to pick out all the tiniest details, down to the individual hair. Gingerly stepping over the threshold, Marmelee approached the statues, drawn to their beauty more than anything else. On one of the shelves, she saw the most beautiful statuette of them all: an insect, some sort of beetle, its stone wings unfolded from their carapace and outstretched, so thin that the stone was almost transparent. Marmelee carefully picked up the beetle, bringing it up to her eyeline, inspecting it from all sides.

“That's my principal hobby, you know...”

The unexpected voice startled her. Time slowed as the beautiful sculpture danced in her hands, finally freeing itself from her grip and falling to the floor, shattering the wings and chipping the main body on impact.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Please forgive me, I didn't...I wanted...I will pay you back, I swear! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bother, I can leave, please...I know that...” a deluge of apologies was uttered by Marmelee, as the heat of embarrassment flushed her face.

“Calm down, calm down”, said the man in a conciliatory way, “The joy is in the making, and not just in the displaying.”

It took a few minutes, and many repeated assertions that no, he didn't need to be repaid for his loss, and that no, she didn't have to leave and finally that yes, he would be more than happy to answer a few questions about Canath.

“But first, if you'll indulge me, I have a few questions of my own. You are a Dryad, are you not? Do you hail from Amalao?”

A shy nod was the response to both questions.

“Ah, Amalao. Once again risen, yet still so hidden.”

The panic now over, Marmelee was able to take more of a measure of the man: his face was weather beaten, his hair grey but neat, and he appeared to be around 50 years old for a human, yet his frame still appeared strong. It was his eyes, however, that were the most prominent feature of his face: behind squared spectacles, she could see intense grey eyes.

His name was Aden, and he had lived in Canath as long as he could remember. His knowledge of the town, even before his time, seemed to be encyclopedic, and Marmelee almost struggled to keep up as she quickly took notes of the many stories that Aden told. Many of Marmelee's theories seemed to be confirmed, especially in regards to the decline of the town, but Aden seemed to know even about the glory days. The hours lengthened and Aden lighted a few candles to supplement the fading light, continuing quickly from where he had left off once he was sat back down.

“Ah yes, the titular family of Canath! Let me tell you, this place was barely a farming village before they saw how valuable its location would be to trade. They made a deal with the local baron, if I recall correctly, although I'm not sure if that particular dynasty still rules or was eventually supplanted,” the man continued, his familiarity with history plainly clear.

“And what of Marek? What happened to him?” enquired Marmelee, thinking back to the statue that she had seen earlier in the day.

“The famous last member of the Canath family. Truly, some say that the fall of the town followed his disappearance, but who truly knows,” said Aden: it was clear that he was taking some delight at being questioned so.

“Is that when the statue was raised?”, asked Marmelee while adjusting her glasses, ready to take more notes.

“Yes, just after he went missing. Maybe it was a way to cling to the past, a way to show that the old, venerated family, even though now gone, was still present within the heart of the city. Foolish really, but when I was commiss...”

An awkward silence followed. It was louder than the constant chatter that had filled the room in the last hour or so, and Aden looked flustered, like he had suddenly realised that something was wrong. Marmelee only now realised how dark it was actually getting. After a minute, Aden seemed to compose himself.

“Anyway, anyway, as I was saying...” but his words were lost, as waves of realisation washed over Marmelee. The statue in the square, old, pitted and worn, yet the detail clear beneath the years of decay. The precise, detailed knowledge that Aden seemed to possess. The scorn towards the perceived thoughts of people that had long left the living world. And finally but most importantly, the slip at the end. Marmelee could feel cold dread building up inside of her.

“I must leave! It's late, I m-must go...” she blurted out suddenly, cutting him off mid-sentence. She quickly stood up, yet she was not prepared for Aden's own speed, as he grabbed her by the arm.

“I think NOT!”, he said, as he quickly but purposefully slipped down his glasses. That was when she felt it, a force of magic erupting from his eyes, like a dam broken, letting the river flow freely.

“Let go of me!”

It was unclear if it was the force of her own voice, or his own surprise at the failure of his magic that sent him stumbling back. As soon as he looked away, Marmelee could feel the magic essence ebb away.

“How? HOW? You... you must be..,” said Aden as he stepped back, “You came specifically for me, didn't you?! But no, NO, you won't get me, I won't be taken!”

The last few words were said almost in a shout, as Aden quickly turned and ran from the room. Taken by surprise, Marmelee stood still, gathering her thoughts and concentrating in order to bring her magic powers to the fore, ready for anything.

Cautiously she approached the door that Aden had gone through. Beyond, the room was filled with different statues, this time not of animals, but of various humans and other sentient races, some standing, some sitting, all with a shocked expression on their faces. Room after room followed this pattern, yet Aden himself was nowhere to be seen. And as night approached, Marmelee knew that she would be missed if she didn't head back soon.

As she left the house, closing the door behind her out of some unfathomable force of habit, her mind went back to the studies that she had conducted in regards to her own race, her true race. No one truly knew how many dragons had been left after the fall of the Dragon Empire, or how many had decide to hide themselves, disguised as humans. She knew one thing: what she had seen today was a mere preview of the the horrors that would be wrought upon the world if her father was allowed to awaken. In the past she had merely used the historical records to back her beliefs, but today she had seen living proof, and this steeled her with a fiery determination to do anything to stop the Dragon Empire from arising, once and for all.

More a Simulation Than a Game: A Partial Pendragon Review

Ages ago, I went to a weekend convention with a couple of my friends, all of which were 18XX players. What followed was an entire weekend of 18XX games, from dusk till dawn. Call us crazy, but I had a good time and a good time was had by all. By the time Sunday came around, the last day of the convention, we were all a bit tired, so the game that we decided upon was 1853, the classic Francis Tresham game based on building railways in India.

This is an very old picture, mind you!

The reason for the choice was that, overall, 1853 is a smoother ride than most other 18XX games. On a forum, I described 1853 as a game replete with gentlemen's agreements, one that you would imagine playing while sipping cognac, smoking a cigar and talking about the gold standard.

The gameplay of 1853 is very sedate, non-competitive and relaxed: unlike most other 18XX games, it's impossible to go bankrupt, it's impossible to have a company dumped on you, and the train rush is so sedate as to be almost leisurely. By some definitions, 1853 would not even be classified as a game (apart from the starting auction, which ultimately decides the winners of the game).

By the description above, you might think that 1853 is not particularly good, or even outright bad, but there is a charm to the game: the use of narrow and broad gauge track seems to be somewhat realistic, the railways in question seem to build organically, and there's something rewarding about seeing the end result of your decision making placed on a large, beautiful map. And thus, this was perfect for the Sunday that followed an entire weekend of 18XX games, all furiously, cut-throatingly competitive.

So what does this have to do with Pendragon? Well, the first time I played Pendragon, I had the same reaction to it that I had to 1853: the actual game mechanisms within Pendragon weren't exactly what I would consider "good" from a pure gameplay perspective, but the simulation aspects that Pendragon has, and the ability of the game to weave a story of the final decades of Roman Britain, truly make for an interesting and evocative game.

First game of Pendragon I had, playing as the Civitates

Now, to put things into perspective, I'm not saying that Pendragon is not competitive, or that it's anywhere close to how non-competitive 1853 actually is. My base of comparison is not between those two games, but between Pendragon and other COIN games. As you might know, I'm a huge fan of the proper use and minimisation of post-decision randomness in games. To me, although some aspects of COINs are completely random, the designs themselves discourage the use of randomness in order to win.

The best example of this is any of the insurgent factions, such as FARC from Andean Abyss. FARC can attack directly in that game, but they can only remove 2 enemy pieces at most, the attack has a chance of failure if they have below 6 guerrillas, and it reveals all of their pieces if they do it. Since being underground is so important in the game, this mechanism discourages the FARC player from attempting the action unless he can guarantee victory (using Ambush), or if the guerrillas are already revealed anyway, in which case there's no downsides from attacking.

All other COIN games in the series that I've tried (I've yet to play Liberty or Death) have followed this formula that disincentivises the use of dice. This could not be further from the opposite in Pendragon. A lot of the most crucial, necessary actions within the game use dice: raiding, which is one of the only ways for the Saxon and Scotti, determines the number of troops by randomly rolling a number of d4. The number of dice is determined by how much you wish to spend on each, separate raid.

The results of these dice rolls can have a huge impact on combat as well. Combat within the game is a curious beast: it is almost completely deterministic, although you can roll to have your troops either evade the enemy attackers, or attempt to ambush them, the latter of which allows you to cause damage before your opponents can strike.Although fully deterministic combat does seem to coincide with the dice minimising nature of COIN games, the actual combat diceroll does actually still occur: it's just the roll that you made when attempting a raid in the first place.

Due to the strict deterministic nature of combat, having one more or one less raider can make all the difference, and essentially decide whether you can storm that castle, or if there is no point in trying. In some ways, this meshing of random number of troops coupled with deterministic combat is the worst of both worlds, without the strength of a fully deterministic game or a purely random one.

The issues with the dice rolling do not stop there: another crucial aspect of the game is the "settle" special ability for the Saxons and Scotti. Settling is always used in conjunction with returning, an operation that allows you to return your victorious raiders with the plunder they collected. For every raider that returns in this way, you roll a d6 and for every 4-6 (or 5-6 for the Scotti), a raider is turned into a warband and placed in that region within Britain, which is ultimately the only way to actually start having settlements within Britain (apart from another special for the Briton factions).

The issue with this particular dice roll is that there is little way to mitigate it apart from having more raiders that you can convert, and if you blank out, that's an entire special action lost on basically a dice roll (and using special actions is a very valuable resource within any COIN game).

What strikes about Pendragon in comparison to most other COIN games is the constant, important use of dice, with a huge amount of post-decision dice rolls required in order to actually get anything done. Considering my tastes, I should have hated Pendragon, but I don't. I actually loved playing it.

Reading my criticism above, it might be hard to believe that this is the case, and I don't deny that many other games in which I've had similar experiences (I'm looking at you, Here I Stand) have been slated by me in the past. But, for all its shortcomings, within the beating heart of Pendragon lies a core of simulation that truly represents the era, and represents it well.

There is a dichotomy in wargaming where people want to have two slices of two completely different cakes: simulation and gameplay. To some, the simulation aspects of wargaming is what makes them important: how the game simulates the era, how it approaches the decisions and tactics used by one side or the other. To others, the simulation aspects are all well and good, but how good is the actual game as a means of competition?

To me, I require a little bit of column A, and a little bit of column B: I like the historical simulation aspect as well as the gameplay. Pendragon, however, is solidly within the simulation camp for me. The development of the game is a sight to behold: initially, the Britons hold strongly to the Island, while being under attack: eventually the enemies from without (and the petty bickering from within) prove too much, and concessions have to be made. Independence is gained from the Roman Empire, but even this is fragile, and soon the lords of Britain are at each other's throats. The raiding is random, but it is random for a reason: you never know how many Saxons or Scotti are going to disembark from their boats, or where exactly they are going to strike. The Saxons and Scotti can't really control how many of their people want to actually settle in Britain: they have to make do with what they get.

I played as the Civitates  within my first game of Pendragon: they are basically the nobles and civilian elites that helped to rule Roman Britain. The other Briton faction is the Dux: the remains of the Roman Army, trying to either keep ties with the empire, or control Britain on their own. What truly amazed me as the Civitates is the amount of distaste I had for my erstwhile Dux ally by the end of the game: my Dux opponent had made it a mission to drive down my resources and wealth, to the extent that I couldn't wait for Britain to fragment so that he couldn't use up my precious resources.

Although I'm not a student of the era, this growing antagonism between the civilian and military sections of Britain seemed true to the premise of the game, and the way that it was grown organically within the mechanisms of Pendragon truly made the game feel special to me. On the other hand, the constant use of resources by the Army meant that some of my turns within the game were simply "Gain resources, then turn some of those resources into wealth" (wealth being a duplicate Civitates-only resource used in certain special actions).

Resource conversion isn't exactly the most exciting thing that you can do with a Operation + Special within a game, but as boring as it was, it made sense in the context of the game, and truly created a feeling that the army was appropriating my hard-won resources for their own needs, which just brought images to my mind of an angry noble plotting his revenge against the Dux after another taxing of his lands.

To me, the last anecdote encapsulates both what I love and hate about Pendragon. The game truly resonates as a depiction of an empire in decline, and it has such flavourful, colourful notes to it that it's hard not to fall in love with it. On the other hand, if you step back and strip Pendragon of all it's flavour, it's flair, it's incentives and subtle psychological tricks that it plays on you, the game itself is bare, unrewarding, random and ultimately, slightly non-competitive.

So would I recommend the game? Absolutely, if you want a unique experience. And absolutely not, if what you are looking for is an actual game. In the end, it is up to you to decide. 

OCS: On Learning a System, Supply Lines and Story Lines

My very first contact with war gaming was with my father: when I was very young (10 years or less), I remember trying to play a couple of war games with him, including Luftwaffe (which, after rebuying it for him as a Christmas present, was actually worse than my prior recollection) and Tobruk, which unfortunately was far too difficult for me to play correctly. Both me and my dad, however, preferred video games, and largely that was my primary hobby, with board war gaming too difficult and "boring" for me to bother to get into heavily.

I do think that this brief start into the hobby was, however, the germination of my subsequent love of board war gaming. About 7 years ago, I became heavily invested into board gaming and from that sprang a renewed interest in board war gaming as well. 

There was still one issue that bothered me: most of my war games at the time were either CDGs or COINs and the only hex 'n' counter games that I played were No Retreat or Unconditional Surrender. I always wanted to try one of those good old fashioned hex games and with no interest in tactical exercises, my attention was drawn towards OCS, a series that, at least in my circles, had drawn nothing but praise.

With years of practice of reading rulebooks, the series rules for OCS didn't seem that daunting, but my initial foray into the game was, quite frankly, a disaster. OCS is one of those games where reading the rulebook can tell you how to play the game, but doesn't tell you how to play the game. What I mean by this is that OCS suffers from that peculiar issue that Napoleon's Triumph also suffers from: the rules can tell you how to move and attack with your pieces, but this hides the intricacies of the system and the tactics and strategies required to actually bring the fight to the enemy.

Most other war games I had played previously were what are pejoratively known as front-pushers. Usually this is due to the scale, but in those sort of games you don't really need to worry about supply inasmuch as you just need to insure that there aren't any enemies between you and your back line. When I first looked at my troops in an OCS game, I had no idea of how to bring them to combat with the required logistical network that would allow them to fight. My previous experience in war gaming had not prepared me for the requirement of figuring out where to set up my supply dumps and actually get supplies to that point.

Plagues by indecision (and this coming from someone that considers himself a fast player), my troops stood still, and minutes turned into hours. Finally, I gave up. OCS had beaten me already and I barely had played a single turn of it.

At that point, I sort of gave up on my attempts at the series. I wanted to get into it, but learning how to actually play the game seemed too large a step, and I felt that I neither had the time nor perseverance to actually be able to enjoy the series.

This sorry state of affairs remained until MMP released Reluctant Enemies. Reluctant Enemies is a low counter density OCS game based on the oft-forgotten battle in Syria between the Commonwealth and Vichy France. Reluctant Enemies was made primarily to get people into the system: along with the low number of counters, the box has a very useful "Learning OCS" booklet. I ordered the game almost immediately: if this didn't manage to teach me OCS, then it was clear the system was not for me.

Starting setup of Reluctant Enemies

Fortunately, I rather enjoyed my time with Reluctant Enemies. The game is a bit of a microcosm of the OCS experience, including a small but important air war, sweeping tank advances in the Syrian desert, and entrenched infantry fights nearer to the coast. Crucially, the game taught me the importance of setting up supply dumps (and protecting them) along with the importance of setting up reserves so that you can react to the actions of your opponent.

The latter is especially important in terms of understanding how to play the game properly, because setting up reserves is crucial to the flow of the game. Reserves are primarily used either offensively or defensively. When used offensively, you can release them during the exploitation phase in order to exploit gaps in your opponent's defence. Defensive reserves can either be used to plug up gaps in your line before they develop (as reserves are the only units that you can move during an opponent's turn). 

The other important lesson that Reluctant Enemies taught me was the importance of initiative. OCS doesn't use a simple I-GO-U-GO system: instead, at the start of each turn, both players do a straight dice-off to see who gets to decide which side moves first.This can potentially lead to someone getting two turns in a row, which is more than enough to crush a weak defensive line. The key to the game is therefore to put your opponent into situations in which they have to go first, thus continuing to allow you to get a double turn in the future. 

With this small success under my belt, I went on a veritable spree of buying all the OCS games that interested me (many of which were out of print): Sicily II, Tunisia II, Korea, DAK and Burma. Sicily II was my next serious attempt at the series, and although I stumbled due to the heavy emphasis on amphibious assault, it was an enjoyable experience.

Tunisia II starting setup.

My next attempt was Tunisia II. Overall I think Tunisia II is a better start into the system than Reluctant Enemies. The start of the campaign has a similar number of units present, and Tunisia II has the benefit that the battle gets progressively larger as more reinforcements arrive, allowing you to expand the game as you learn. As well as that, Tunisia II is quite an interesting tactical/strategic exercise in comparison to Reluctant Enemies: this is due to the fact that there are only three avenues of attack in Reluctant Enemies and all three bog down due to either rivers, mountains or both. As such, success in Reluctant Enemies is heavily reliant on rolls going your way, rather than tactical acumen. 

This is not to say that Reluctant Enemies doesn't do a stellar job of getting people into the series, but after playing the other OCS titles that I bought, there wasn't really any reason for me to go back to it: it just doesn't have the staying power that the other games in the series have, and there's nothing exceptional about Reluctant Enemies that would make someone want to play it over Tunisia II or DAK.

The next game I tried was Korea, which was enjoyable (to a point). I played as the North Koreans, facing the South Korean and UN troops played by my regular OCS opponent.

North Korean troops driving down the peninsula

The start of Korea was enjoyable, with me quickly surrounding Seoul and then driving down to Pusan and setting up a perimeter, as US troops arrived to bolster the South Korean defenders. The game played pretty historically, with my opponent then making his landings at Incheon, quickly forcing my troops back. 

Although perfectly enjoyable, the game quickly ground to a halt due to the rules concerning Chinese intervention. The rules on that particular subject aren't great and basically meant that the US/UN player never really wanted to place his head into the noose. 

Not being a game designer myself, I couldn't really think of a way to get past this problem while still using the basic framework of an OCS game, which also highlights one of the limitations of attempting of series-style games: it becomes difficult to create bespoke solutions to specific events in specific conflicts, which is largely the reason why OCS hasn't really deviated trying to portray World War II or World War II-style conflicts. 

To be clear, this isn't the only issues with OCS: there are oft-discussed topics such as the power of air forces and the cheapness of them (in terms of supply) in comparison to artillery barrages. Or how the game due to its limited ZOC (Zone of Control) effects allows for unnatural shuffling of front-lines that would have never happened historically. I have been aware of these criticisms of the system and I don't completely deny that they are issues with the game, but overall these points do not detract from the fact that the system has provided me with incredible story lines of past battles. This especially has been an highlight of the system for me: my first attempts at any of the games described above have shown me the reasons why the battles unfolded as they did, even though if the schedules in most of our games weren't exactly the same as the real life results. And this point was made abundantly clear to me when I played Burma II.

Starting setup of Burma II (note the 17th Indian almost completely surrounded)

Burma II focuses on the U Go campaign, one of the last offensive campaigns of the Empire of Japan. The game starts with both sides attacking and defending, with an offensive against Imphal/Kohima by the Japanese and an offensive in the east by combined US and Chinese offensive. One of the highlights of the game is the rather extreme logistical position that both sides are in, especially in the hilly terrain of the Naga Hills, where trucks are basically unable to function, forcing both sides to rely on mules to cart their supplies to the front. The game progressed pretty historically, although my Chinese/US troops didn't manage to dislodge the resolute Japanese defenders and I also lost Kohima too quickly when compared with real life. With Imphal under siege, I was forced to use my planes to ship supplies there, with the Japanese pushing ever closer and using infiltration tactics to push past my defences. However, the logistical situation for the Japanese near Kohima was dire, and even with several mule convoys, it was difficult for them to both fight and remain in supply, which highlighted both for me and my opponent how crazy the attempt to attack Kohima was. 

Imphal under siege.

What was made abundantly clear to me, however, was the effect that the OCS supply rules have on the game. Although some criticise the game for bean-counting due to the way that supply is handled, forcing players to use mules and trucks to move supplies allows the game to have movement effects on the supplies in question and showcases how different types of transport have to be used: trucks are fast, but only on roads, while mules move slowly, but can be used in smaller trails. As well as that, the tightening noose of the Imphal siege made me worry about every single supply token that I used: the game finally ended with my troops opening the Kohima/Imphal road, but not before my supplies in Imphal had been pushed to the brink: a couple more attacks and potentially that whole front would have collapsed, and I only managed to open the road in the nick of time.

This, to me, was the most powerful image that I have ever experienced in a war game. My troops surrounded on all sides, with supplies dwindling and only my transport planes to feed them: the liberating relief forces slowly, painfully fighting for every inch in order to reopen the road and then the triumphant feeling of re-opening the road and the trucks finally bringing in supplies again. 

And this is largely why I've fallen in love with the system. Most of my previous wargaming was done at the strategic or grand strategic level, and now I finally understood why people were so invested into playing at the operational and tactical levels: the results feel more personal and the story lines created by the games are richer and more rewarding. It's hard to bring in the human element when you are playing something at the Corps or Army-level.

As such, if you get a chance to try out OCS, I would suggest you go for it. The system has faults, but I don't think they detract from the games, and the system will allow you to see that what was truly important was not only the location of troops, but also their access to supply and the difficulties of bringing supplies to the front. And understanding this can only lead to a deeper understanding of the conflicts in question and why certain campaigns unfolded as they did.

Sekigahara, the Beauty of Simplicity

It's weird for me to reflect back to the number of times I heard people sing the praise of Sekigahara, and for me to never have been sufficiently interested in the game to actually get it, or ask someone that had the game to play it with me. Maybe it was just a lack of interest in the era/war, but I've had situations in the past where I wasn't interested in a particular conflict until I played a game centred around it.

What truly amazes me is that, even on the day that I finally tried playing it, Sekigahara had been selected as a game of last resort. My friend and I had planned to get a game of Colonial Twilight in, but realised that after setup and rule explanation, we wouldn't have enough time to complete it. So we rummaged through my friend's game collection to find a 2 player alternative. Going through the collection, it was pointed out fairly early that Sekigahara would fit, but still we continued searching, only returning to the game once we had exhausted all other options.

With hindsight, it now almost feels like destiny was conspiring against me, trying to prevent me from playing a game that could potentially become one of my favourite games ever. And strangely, I feel confident in asserting this now, even after only having played the game once and even though me and my friend got more than a couple of rules wrong. Sekigahara is truly that good.

At this point, I could almost finish this review, although this would be a disservice to the reader, since I haven't plumbed the depths of what makes the game interesting. Sekigahara has elements of one of my favourite games ever: Napoleon's Triumph. Napoleon's Triumph is a game that I have compared to playing poker with 5 hands at once, and this simile is even more apt in Sekigahara. 

To understand why, it is first of all important to understand the chief mechanisms of Sekigahara. The game resides within the category of 'block war games', a sub-genre of wargames in which usually the strength of a particular piece is kept hidden in order to create a fog of war. This can lead to interesting decisions: is that huge block of enemy units actually a threat, or are they under-strength? Can I bluff my opponent into not attacking by seeming to be strong where I'm actually weak? Although these sort of mechanisms are present even in hex'n'counter wargames through the use of the stack, they are principal within block wargames.

The main difference between Sekigahara and most other block games is the way that combat is represented within the game. Usually, in block wargames, you have simple X+ to hit systems when you are fighting. Sekigahara, instead, uses a system that is both mechanically interesting and (after a brief read of the designer commentary present within the rulebook) true to the era.

The way it works is that you have a hand of cards, with most of the cards having an emblem (called a mon in japanese) of one of the daimyo fighting on your side. During fights, you can only reveal blocks (and thus add their strength) if you play a card matching the block's mon. If you don't have a card, that block won't fight, which represents the shifting loyalties and intrigue that was a principal part of the conflict. You also get bonuses for revealing mon of the same clan during a single battle, as well as using special cards to activate the bonuses of arquebusiers or cavalry.

In essence, the game rewards you for both bringing to the fight the right army combinations as well as ensuring that you have the right cards to fight at the right time, which to me felt like a mix between Napoleon's Triumph (where army composition is the only determinant of who wins a fight) and Maria (where you are trying to exploit particular hands of cards while bluffing your opponent into not attacking areas where your hand is weak). 

Hence, Sekigahara's elements of poker shine to the fore, and your poker hands are not only the blocks and their composition within the map, but also how they interact with the hand of cards that you have, leading to endless, cascading possibilities for bluffing, double bluffing and pulling out desperate, end of game acts that somehow manage to actually work out in your favour. 

But what is truly incredible of this game is that Sekigahara is able to pack so much depth in such an easy and quick to play package. The rules, for anyone that is familiar with the depths that wargame rulebooks can plunge in, is almost an exercise in simplicity. A few neatly laid out pages are all that divide you from taking off the shrink-wrapping and actually playing the game. It is incredible that, in a 20 page rulebook, only 11 pages are reserved for the rules while the rest are left for historical analysis and designer notes.

Wargamers, depending on how far they have dived into the hobby, are used to ponderous tomes or rulebooks of truly biblical size, but sometimes there is something to be said about a game that takes 10 minutes flat to decipher. This is not to say that heavier rulebooks necessarily lead to worse games, and some of my favourite wargames have rulebooks that I have puzzled over again and again, but simplicity, especially in a hobby which has quite significant barriers to entry, can be a virtue.

With such gushing praise of the game it can't be a surprise that I would recommend anyone, even non-wargamers, to at least try the game. To me, Sekigahara, much like Napoleon's Triumph, is a true showcase of how wargames can innovate, grow and reach broader audiences, and to do it in a small, easy to digest package that is unlikely to scare off an interested party, like many other, more complex games can. To me, simplicity and efficiency of rules has as much a place in the wargaming hobby as large, complex and strategically/tactically deep games.