"Review of Wargames Illustrated #315" Topic

Well, my head is still spinning from getting some feedback of my reviews from some of the good and the great. I'd better keep my wits about me…

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: A great picture of T-34's wading a river through a ruined Germany. DESPERATE MEASURES, DEAD MAN'S HAND, a photo of a guy dressed as Napoleon. It's all very inviting…

EDITORIAL: Dan has left the building for this one and long time Flames of War writer Mike Haught is the guest editor for this one. He does well setting the scene for the last battles on the Eastern Front and I was expecting a good theme for this month, but looking at the contents opposite there's only 2 articles on the subject.

WARGAMING NEWS: Battlefront plastic T-34s, Osprey books on Napoleonic cavalry and Big Bertha in WW1, some nifty 28mm landing craft and a plea for dioramas to be built for the 70th anniversary of D-Day. My scratchbuilding skills, or lack of them, won't be of much use there.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER: By the guest editor, this goes into the types of pocket battles, salient and other pincer movement battles. Nominally for Flames of War, there's still good applications for the WW2 game of your choice. If you do like FoW, this is excellent. It shows which mission templates work best when it comes to fighting in pockets or salient. As a bonus, there's a new "Breakout" mission…cue Swing Out Sister! All very useful.

YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS: No, nothing to do with John McEnroe, this is a feature about the pike and shot era skirmish game, "Donnybrook", which you may remember from the previous issue's Bokkenrider article. Here, the game's designers go into the design ethics of the game and give you a preview with some nice photos to go along with it. The game seems part Sharp Practice, part SAGA with card driven activations and various faction units. Not much in the way of samples from the book, and a scenario to go with it would have helped but there's a link to the game.

BREAKOUT: A Flames of War battle report. (Deep breath). Usually I like these style of reports. They read like sports commentary. Both players talk about their tactics, you see the action unfold, there's helpful charts to follow casualty progress and shot-by-shot commentary from the players. However….this is one of the most boring ones I've ever read for FoW and not a good advert for the game either.

The big problem is that both players have decided to adopt a strategy of lining up their tanks at each other and sort it out in a battle of attrition. The German player attempts some manoeuvring but the Soviet player just lines his T-34's up, wall to wall, along a treeline and for most of the game doesn't move them. It made me think why on earth he bothered on choosing to field T-34's in the first place and that anti-tank guns and some artillery would have been better. Maybe it's because BF wanted to showcase the new plastic T-34s they make? In which case this is not a great advert for them because they're all bunched up with a lot of burning markers on them. Not only that, his static tactics don't get to display the new special rules featured in Desperate Measures either.

Added to that, the terrain isn't best suited for the forces the players chose: Lots of woods, marshes and wheat fields that restrict movement and firing options. Neither player can get around to inflict side armour shots and are overly reliant on re-enforcements showing up to do the flanking work for them. If they want to sell me Desperate Measures, then I want to see T-34s advancing over plains or rolling hills with enough space in between them to notice the details. I certainly don't want to see them in a parking lot.

So it's another round of ammunition for the anti-FoW crowd. They can point to this article and show that the game has institutionalised wall-to-wall tanks syndrome. But, using the sports analogy again, this game is the wargame equivalent of long ball football tactics….or slow over rates in cricket or whatever boring tactics they use in American football or baseball. Now football is meant to be a lovely, beautiful game with neat passing, running down the wings, putting in floated crosses and all that. Then someone worked out that most goals are scored from fewer than 3 passes so the long ball game, bypassing the midfield and not bothering with that sissy short passing, was conceived. Now, if you were to witness a boring long ball game you might end up thinking that's all football has to offer. It's the same with Flames of War: If you see a game like this, you'll think that's all the game is capable of. You miss out on the positives. So I'm puzzled why the editor would feature a game that a) isn't a good advert for the game and b) doesn't show off the new book and rules very well (although, to be fair, the Germans do a bit better than the Soviets).

OUTFITTING ACW CAVALRYMEN: In keeping with the good standards of the previous entries in this series, this gives you a good guide to uniforms, weapons and deployment of cavalry in the ACW. There's a short bit on how to paint up union cavalry (but not Confederate, which is a shame).

THE EL CID EXTRAVAGANZA: Doyen of the US wargaming scene, Duke Seifried shows us his very colourful El Cid castle diorama and the various Spanish and Moor armies that go with it. A nice bit of history in this piece but not much for the reader to take away and apply.

FIGHTING WELLINGTON TO A DRAW, QUATRE BRAS: More a preview of the upcoming Mega Wargames book than a wargaming scenario, you still get a nice bit of history plus some tips on how to re-fight the battle but, sadly, no OOBs or maps. You'll need the book for that. Plenty of nice photos though.

THE STRANGER: A variant for Dead Man's Hand, featuring a man with no name or Shane kind of hero to be fielded in the game as a faction all of his own. You get plenty of additional rules, scenarios and some nice game cards to cut out.

SAVAGE WARS OF PEACE, PART 6: Another, largely interesting, entry in this long running colonial wargames series. You probably know the format by now: New role playing abilities for your campaign characters, a history of a small war of the era (in this case, Gordon and the Seige of Khartoum) and a scenario for Black Powder. Very well done and ticking all the boxes of having history, a scenario and everything you'll need to re-fight it at home or at your club. I didn't even mind the cod-Victoriana speak this time.

BATTLE OF TARAWA: I'm sure I read a Tarawa article in WI a couple of years back. I think it's one of those battles that WI likes to revisit again, and again, and again…much like Gettysburg (more of that later). But, in fairness, this shows how to build a 6x4 Tarawa table and it gives some force suggestions for Bolt Action. Yes, a familiar WI battle but well presented.

OK, taking a short break. Part 2 later on.

Dead Mans Hand
Black Powder
Bolt Action
Flames of War

Another edition of "Wargaming in Nottingham Illustrated". Does nobody on the editorial team ever leave Nottingham to discover games other than the ones their mates publish?

…well, there's more to come. As Guy and Henry of the other magazines put it, they can only print what they receive. And to be fair to WI, it is the glossy big names mag of the three so you're kind of asking it to do a role the other two fulfil. Also, I don't begrudge them putting in Flames of War material because it is the game they own and produce.

Anyway, here's part two.

CRISIS 2013. A nice little report on Belgium's (and possibly continental Europe's) premier wargames show. A good plug for a show outside of the US and UK. Nice detail on the Dien Bien Phu game and even the manufacturers turn up with their 3D printers: Figures while-u-wait.

SURVIVING PICKETT'S CHARGE: You think seeing the same games all the time in WI is tedious, what about a seemingly endless supply of Gettysburg games? Once again, the battle and Pickett's Charge get a feature in WI. It's pretty well written, it's for Fire & Fury, the pictures are nice and there's a map and links to a website for more information but….haven't we been here before, many times?

HARD GOING: US TANKS IN VIETNAM: Purely a historical article on US armour in the Vietnam war. Goes into deployment, uses, types, tactics, etc. Interesting but no immediate wargaming use, more background information.

AFRICA DAY: A Death In The Dark Continent gaming day report. Mostly a "games with my mates" piece with lots of name checking of participants. Amidst this, there is some useful information to be gathered about how you could apply some of the scenarios and special rules to your own games but I always find these articles leave me cold as they don't draw me in.

A DESIGNER'S JOURNEY, SENSITIVE WARGAMERS: The opinion piece at the end by Alessio Cavatore. Here he talks about the design process used to give national characteristics in Bolt Action. You may not agree with his conclusions (and he notes that fact) but it does show how one could go about thinking these things out and how archetypes work for him. I never mind a game designer showing their thought process in their work.

OVERALL: Not an outstanding issue, but a solid one. Sometimes an iffy issue of WI is bailed out by some decent FoW articles but here it's the other way around: The FoW stuff is sparse (not justifying the cover or the theme status) and only 1 of the 2 articles is really good. The rest is decent stuff covering a number of eras (but not ancients this time) and the regular articles maintain their high standards. This isn't going to be one for those into games off the beaten track, but if you like the well known games you'll get something out of this.

Would it be possible to scan the cover of each issue and include it with your monthly reviews? I enjoy the reviews very much, but it would help me remember which issue I want to buy if I can also see the cover. I don't know if copyright issues are involved with a cover scan, but I would think that WI wouldn't mind the free publicity.

@ Der Alte Fritz

No need to scan it, the image is on their website wargamesillustrated.net so just a link to the site should be enough.

Henry

Good review, thanks.

I think part of the problem with the FoW set piece games is that they are fought over too small a piece of terrain. Limiting the terrain area might make for photo opportunities show casing lots of BF products in each frame, and makes for a suitably short game that fits neatly into the allotted magazine space, but it also as you say gives ammo to the FoW haters as everything is lined up in rows pooping off at each other with hardly any room to move.

There have been some real corkers in the past. I remember the Early War Arras game with the Matildas and motorcycle infantry racing to the German objectives and it was well presented, not too overwhelming in terms of forces, and was genuinely tense. The Devil's Brigade one where the Americans had to get on the table, get the objective and then get off in 8 turns was also very good. But I felt this time it was a case that the wrong forces were chosen for the terrain being used (or vice versa) and probably the wrong points level as well. The Soviet player was very unimaginative in terms of tactics and the German player had some clue, but just had no answer to an opponent lining up his tanks other than lining up his own.