"wargamer.com review of At All Costs, Metz 1870" Topic

Any board wargame that lists Bruce Weigle's 1870 miniature rules as a reference obviously gets my attention. Here is my review of GMT's recent release At Any Cost, Metz 1870, a counter and hex offering devoted to "friction" with a distinctly miniature flair.

link

Ciao, Colonel Bill

wargamer.com
ageofeagles.com

Very good review and I was on the fence for this one. I'm definitely considering it now.

Have bought it – am eagerly waiting to play it – will be an appetizer for my own huge 6 mm FPW project :-)

I tried it out and found that while there is plenty of interesting stuff going on it plays very, very slowly. It hit my discard pile rapidly.

I do agree with that, as I noted in my article, an hour and 15 minutes plus for me playing solitaire. It sure seemed slow, but I'd like to compare it with other, similar games to see if its just me. This might be because its TOO tactical. Of course, if you really love the subject, its never too long :).

Ciao, Colonel Bill

wargamer.com

The trend is very quick games you can finish in a short time – I love the long haul games were you get really immersed – similar to miniature rules :-)

I may have to get this. Board Wargames were my first love and I still find it hard to resist them. You cannot easily replicate this scale of play with miniatures. I just cannot find the opponents or the time as miniatures takes up so much of my disposable time. When you do these reviews you should crosspost to the Boardgame board.

I wonder if this game can be used as a basis for a campaign game?

Hmmm… Friction. Nope, not going to touch that one again.

I still have and play Napoelon's Last Battles I enjoy the original version for its simplicity. The newer versions of course, complicate the system, which slows play…so I don't often play Decision Game's version. It is sort of like the Toyota Camry. At first a clean, small mid-range car, reliable and decent looking. As the years go by, the design becomes bigger, more complicated, more expensive and…all the original design benefits are lost or at least muddied.

I was signed up to get AAC, but the time between reaching 500 and actual publication was many months looong, and never reading anything about the points that Bill G. makes--being similar to NLB for instance. If I had, I certainly would have waited it out… however, from the sounds of it, the game isn't all that 'clean' if it is slow, which is disappointing.

Bill, do you think it id possible to drop some of the 'slowing' tactical details without disrupting the system?