Carthage at Historicon

I got to play two scenarios of one of my favorite games (C&C: Ancients) at Historicon 2011 in Valley Forge, with one of my best friends, Chris.

We played, first, the battle of The Crimissos River (341 BC) between Hasdrubal of Carthage (me) and Timoleon of Syracuse (Chris). Here is the intro from the scenario:

The Carthaginians learned from earlier defeats in Sicily that they had to field reliable, trained heavy infantry of their own. They formed the Sacred Band, a force of about 2,500 excellently trained Carthaginians, as good or better than the best the Greeks or Syracusans could field. They formed a part of a large army under Hasdrubal, advancing eastward to subjugate Sicily. Opposing him with a much smaller army was the able tactician Timoleon. Ever aggressive, Timoleon anxiously awaited an opportunity to strike the Carthaginians a hard blow on his terms. He got that chance when, on a foggy morning, Hasdrubal carelessly ordered his army to cross the Crimissos River without bothering to send out scouts (who would have reported that Timoleon’s army was arrayed on the bluffs just beyond the river). Waiting until about half of the Carthaginian army had crossed, Timoleon unleashed his excellent heavy infantry phalanx against the surprised Carthaginians. Most who survived fled, but the Sacred Band stood their ground and were annihilated by superior numbers, (aided by a sudden rainstorm that slowed Carthaginian reinforcements crossing the river). Seeing the disaster unfolding across the river, the remainder of Hasdrubal’s army broke and fled. The loss of so many citizen soldiers had a horrific effect on Carthage. The Sacred Band was reformed, but only once was it ever dispatched from Africa again, and then only for a very short campaign.

Chris totally dominated my Carthaginians in this scenario, and he ended up winning 5-1 - a smashing defeat! The Carthaginian Sacred Band was his first target (they were playing "Houses of the Holy" and he doesn't like Zeppelin). His Syracusan Heavy Infantry totally outclassed my African Citizens.

We went on to play a second game, after some tasty treats from the Flying Dog brewery (I had the Doggy Style Classic Pale Ale, which is pretty low carb for my diet, and also the Snake Dog India Pale Ale - also low carb).

The second outing for us was the battle of Bagradas (253 BC). I got to play General Regulus and his Roman army, fighting in North Africa in this battle from the end of the First Punic War. Chris played the army of Xanthippus, a mercenary Greek general for the Carthaginians. Here is the text on the scenario from GMT:

The Romans are on the verge of defeating Carthage and ending the First Punic War. Regulus and a veteran Roman army have landed in Africa, and though woefully short of cavalry, have defeated several Carthaginian forces. Desperate, the Carthaginians turned to an otherwise unemployed Greek general, Xanthippus. While not on a par with Alexander the Great, Xanthippus at least knew how to train and command an army, and that was enough. The Carthaginian army marched into the Bagradas Valley, and Regulus, confident of yet another victory, offered battle. It was to prove a costly mistake for him. The Carthaginian cavalry and elephants routed the Roman cavalry, and then turned on the flanks and rear of the Roman army, now fully engaged with the Carthaginian infantry. The Roman army disintegrated. Those who survived told of the horror of being overrun by elephants and cavalry. This Carthaginian victory prolonged the war. It took several years before any Roman army would stand and fight against elephants. The larger lesson— proper employment of a combined arms army over a largely infantry army resulting in victory—was lost on the Romans. They had to re-learn it at the Trebbia, Lake Trasimenus and Cannae.

This one was much closer in the end. At the beginning, however, Chris was totally dominating my Roman army. The score after the first few exchanges was something like 5-1 in favor of the African force under Xanthippus, but then my Romans rallied, and it became 6-6. Finally, I got lucky, and it ended up at 7-7.

The Carthaginian Elephants were quite fun to play in this scenario, and when they rampaged (which they did several times) they were a danger to both sides.

I could have lost 6 battles in a row, and I still would have loved my time playing. A great evening.

Pet Peeve: people who walk up and see the game and say "oh, what a silly game, it looks like Stratego". Don't these people know this game came from Miniatures play, and was only later converted to a board game? Whatever.

Tags: wargames

Blocks of War II: Wizard Kings

The second block game to get the "Gaming With Chuck" treatment, is Columbia Games' excellent fantasy wargame, Wizard Kings.

Classic Orcs/Elves matchup, right out of the box

This is a terrific design, from 2000, following on the 1998 release of Victory: The Blocks of War. In both cases, the game itself is sort of a "game kit" in that it gives you some maps (which are geomorphic), a pair of generic armies, and some rules. The games themselves are actually scenarios that use some subset of the bits that come in the box. The scenario can be as simple as "Each side chooses 100G of pieces, and come on the map from opposite sides. The last man standing wins". Not very exciting, but certainly a scenario. Now with the same pieces, a totally separate scenario can be played next time - very cool indeed (although this is true of almost all scenario based games).

The base game comes with four maps (in the first edition, maps numbered 1 through 4 - there are 8 more maps available from Columbia Games as add-ons, and there are four more numbered 13-16 in the second edition box set). An impressive variety of terrain types are represented on the maps, and all sorts of terrain configurations become available.

At the beginning of the match, players select their armies based on a Gold Piece (point) value. As with Hellenes, this is a classic Columbia style design, where the blocks take hits over time. When "purchasing" a unit for a scenario, therefore, each successive level of the unit must be bought (up to the block's maximum, usually three or four). The blocks are then placed on the board, in the cities on your side of the map if playing the basic scenario, and the game starts.

There are seven different armies available for play. This has changed between editions, but with the first edition of the game (which I own) the armies were Elves and Orcs (both came with the box set); Dwarves; Amazons; Norsemen; Undead; and Beastmen known as the Ferkin (more like Pigmen than Beastmen). Each army has a unique set of unit types, but all involve a wizard, as well as an assortment of other unit types.  In the second edition, the Ferkin are replaced with a generic Human Medieval army.  The other big differences between the two editions are in how additional armies are acquired.  In the first edition, the game came with complete Orc and Elf armies.  You could purchase the other five armies, each separately, for a couple of bucks each.  With the second edition, you get a handful of blocks in the main set for each army, and you purchase reinforcement packs which come with random new blocks and stickers, enough for some in each army.  With the second edition, you automatically get some blocks for each army whether you like it or not (who wouldn't?).  There were also Chaos Mercenary sets (which included a bunch of monster, and enough blocks to assign four to each of the seven main armies), and the Were-Creatures set, which added optional rules to use phases of the moon to enhance/limit Were Creatures, and another set of four blocks and stickers for each of the seven Races/Armies.  The third big difference between the sets are the maps - the first edition comes with maps 1-4.  The second edition comes with maps 13-16.

Multi-player game in progress

The game plays very well, and the pacing and advancement of the game are fun, if sometimes a bit slow. When playing the standard scenario, which is simple conquest of the cities belonging to your opponent, the game can devolve into a big slugathon. But when playing any of the multitude of scenarios available (or making some up) the game becomes much more interesting.

Other than Magic, which is represented by a list of spells that your wizard can cast (each army is different, which gives good variety and more "feel" to the individual armies), the tactical combat rules are similar to other block games. Each unit has an initiative rating, and a combat ability rating. The initiative is a letter which gives general order for the blocks (lettered, 'A', 'B' and 'C'). Then the combat ability is a number, below which a dice rolled for that unit will score. Unlike Hellenes, there is no card play (although on the excellent support fansite, Wizard Kings Wiki, there is a variant that used cards very similar to how they appear in Hammer of the Scots - a variant that continues to intrigue me), there is no route capability in combat. Other than scenario specific, cities do not need to be besieged.

The game is fun, interesting (if you like fantasy), ripe for scenario development, and suitable for multi-player play (which is great, if you want something more than a typical 2 player wargame). Recommended, and a great block game.

After some movement and combat, it is then time to reconstitute.  In most scenarios this means that you now have Gold Pieces (points) in order to either add to reduced levels of blocks out there, or to buy new blocks (and maybe enhance them up a few levels).

I played a couple of rounds lately with my daughter, and she had a great time.  She then helped me set up my next game of WK, and picked Orcs vs. the Undead.  An uppity Necromancer wanted to take over the land of the Goblinoid hordes.  It was a good game - the cheap easily replaced Orc Army light infantry kept coming back after a slaughter, whereas many of the units in the Undead Army are quite expensive, so even when they did return from the dead, it took a couple of turns to build up their strength.

Tags: wargames

Blocks of War I: Hellenes by GMT

In a recent high level of activity, I played a number of different block games. For the purpose of this series of articles, I am going to stretch the definition a bit and include the most excellent Richard Borg title "C&C:A", but this first entry, Hellenes from GMT is a classic block game in the most perfect tradition of blending the Columbia Games heritage with GMT's added goodness.

Hellenes - Sparta in Red, Athens in Blue

Going back to Hammer of the Scots, and some titles from before, Columbia has been blending the great idea of their block games (which feature 1-sided wooden blocks for units, allowing for great fog-of-war; and the blocks rotate showing stepwise reduction in combat unit strengths) with the more modern ideas of card-activation in a wargame.

I don't know for sure (and I bet there are half a dozen forum articles and geeklists at Board Game Geek on the topic) but I think that the first of the card-driven designs may have been Hannibal and Successors both from Avalon Hill, but these were quickly improved and followed up by For the People, Paths of Glory and Wilderness War from GMT. With the design for Hammer of the Scots, Columbia expanded the idea to separate the unit activation cards from event cards. Each round a player picks one, and it gives either a number of activations (for units or groups of units), or an event. This keeps the game always fresh and adds a lot to replay value. The GMT idea for the cards had three things on each card - unit activations, events, or replenishment - and when a card was picked, the player then had to choose which they wanted. The cards were balanced, so that the really good activation cards usually had the good events, and so on, so that the decisions were tough and required some decent thought and planning. Elements that make for a great game, in my book.  By the way, see the homemade map for Hammer of the Scots, by DK Kemler (as posted on Board Game Geek)- it is beautiful!

Homemade map for Hammer of the Scots

The recent game Hellenes from 2009 takes the Columbia idea of blocks with hidden values, and rolling for combat based on a two-value combat rating. The first value is a letter (in this case, from A to F) that gives the basic "initiative" value of the fighting - so that all A units fight before all B units and so on. Then there is a numerical value (usually from 1 to 3) which gives the target number for scoring a hit. Roll 1d6 for the strength (called the Combat Value, or CV) of the block (which ranges from 1 to 4, based on the current strength of the unit), and each dice that is equal or less to the "hit" number scores a hit on the enemy. An equal range at the top of the dice span means an enemy unit is routed. There are specifics about which units take the hits first, and who routs first, etc. Simple, but elegant, and gives great results with some appreciable depth. So far, this is classic Columbia Games (although I don't recall seeing the to-rout capability in older designs). But GMT adds rules for naval transports (there are, not surprising in a game on the Peloponnesian War, lots of naval units), as well as rules for sieges, pillaging, and so on - to capture the feel of the city states going into rebellion, and being besieged (all from Thucydides - great stuff). And with the activation cards all having an event, the goodness from GMT makes its way in.

There is a 2007 Columbia design on the same topic - Athens & Sparta, which appears to be a little bit simpler, and can cover the entire war in one sitting (whereas the more detailed Hellenes covers scenarios of the war in a single sitting), but it is a small matter of difference about which card system you prefer. Both have their strengths, and both (to me anyway) are appealing.

On Thursday, August 26, Wayne and I played a game at the weekly ODMS meetup, and he took Athens while I became a Spartan general for the evening. The game was great, and although I won, I believe it was due to a fluke in my exploiting the economic engine of the game a turn before Wayne was prepared for it. We have scheduled a rematch, and shall see how it goes. This time I think there will be a lot more fighting over the point-value-rich colony city states. It, like the original war, should be glorious!

On a side note, I would like to put out an endorsement for two histories on the Peloponnesian War - the first from Donald Kagan (The Peloponnesian War) (a few years older, but quite excellent), and the second from Victor Davis Hanson (A War Like No Other).

Thanks,
See you soon - Chuck

Tags: wargames, boardgames, Peloponnesian War