I've sadly neglected this blog, neglect that I hope to repair in the coming year. However, given that 2015 is almost behind us, I thought there might be time to do a few quick wrap-up posts.
For one thing, my last post was a review of what was happening in the war on the Western Front in spring 1915. So a post to review what major events took place during the year, on the Western Front and elsewhere, might be in order.
Since I'm an avid wargamer, it seems that there should be a word or two about the score or more of wargames and game modules that came out in 2015.
If I had the time and resources, I'd like to post on the Great War books that hit the shelves in 2015. I certainly don't have time and space to review even a portion of the; I wish I could even point the way to some decent reviews, but that's bit too much to aim for at this late date.
So, Games...
In 2015, going by Board Game Geek's records, publishers released 19 new games on the Great War, as well as 12 modules or other supporting material.
Six of the items in the supporting material category were new aircraft for the popular flying game Wings of Glory. I can't say much about them, as I haven't played the game much this year, and I've not played with any of the new figures, but they certainly look as gorgeous at those models usually do. Four are new fighters or ground-attack aircraft: the Hannover CL.III two-seater, the Macchi M.5 seaplane, the Nieuport 28 biplane fighter, and the Fokker E.V monoplane fighter. The other two are a bit of a cheat to include for 2015, but they're tremendous news: the "Giants of the Sky" aircraft--the British Handley Page O/400 and German Zeppelin Staaken R.VI heavy bombers. These ginormus twin-engine bombers have joined the WoG tabletop game by means of a Kickstarter campaign that raised six times its original goal. The aircraft models are rumoured to have arrived at the publisher's from the manufacturer a week before Christmas and may be flying around the world even as I write, but I'm not entirely sure they count as being relelased in 2015.
Five more of the "ad ons" are information books for the Great War at Sea system. Since they are all alternate-history products, I'm going to pass on by them. I'm also going to pass on two tactical modules for Critical Hit's "ATS" system (Blasted Woods and Tankschreken!)
So, on to the actual games. Six are repurposing of existing systems or republications, in whole or in part. The imaginatively titled Great War (complete with expansion, cleverly called Tank!) is the latest implementation of Richard Borg's card and miniatures system familiar to players of Memoir '44, BattleCry, Battlelore, and the Commands and Colors series. They're always entertaining games; they don't often feel as if they have more than a passing relation to the history they purport to be about, but in the tired refrain of excuse-makers everywhere, "Any opportunity to get people playing history-themed games [or watching execrably unhistorical historical movies] is a way to teach them about history, right?" Well, yes, but often all it teaches them is wrong. I can't speak to Great War, but I played a lot of Memoir '44 back in the day and, while it was a great deal of fun, I can't say that it seemed as if it taught anyone anything about the history of World War Two except (possibly) the names of some of the battles. Just going by the photos on BGG, this looks to be the same, with opposing trenches right on top of each other, tank on tank combat, artillery deployed on the board, etc.
Another reimplementation is Great War Commander, a repurposing of the Combat Commander system from Chad Jensen and GMT. I have tried several times to like Combat Commander but failed every time.The disconnect between the total randomness of the card-draw system and what it is supposed to represent creates an impassable gap in my willing suspension of disbelief. I have no problem with the use of cards in GMT's other CDGs like Paths of Glory, where they represent the scarcity of operational or strategic resources and cause players endless fits of indecision as they try to spread too few assets over too many problems. But in a tactical game like this, the inability of troops to take a perfectly normal action when in no way hindered by the enemy simply because they don't have the right card...I know I should wave my hands and say "fog of war" and "imperfect command and control" but it just breaks for me. Doesn't for others. De gustibus.
Also in the republication category are First Battle of the Marne from Turning Point (a repub of One Small Step's Miracle on the Marne) and In the Trenches from Tiny Battle Publishing (republication of the game of the same name from Grenier Games). And SPW has published Tannenberg: The Introductory Game as an envoi to their Die Weltkrieg Series. Splitting off Tannenberg from their original Tanneberg/Galicia game pair and selling it as a ziploc with a weblink to video tutorials, SPW looks to give new players and easy way in to their complex (but rewarding) WWI family of wargames.
In a way, even 1914: Serbien Muss Sterbien is almost a reimplementation, as it uses the same system developed for 1914: Offensive à outrance (itself related to 1914: Twilight in the East. But each volume in this series has tackled a different topic; here designer Michael Resch approaches the smaller (though not small) topic of the Austrian war on Serbia, instead of the opening phases of the Great War on the entire eastern or western front. I've not had a chance to play this yet, but I'm very much looking forward to.
Finally, there are the thirteen entirely new entries for this year. Four are strategic in scope (The Lamps Are Going Out, 1914: Germany at War; Balance of Power; 1WW: The First World War); four are operational (Lettow-Voerbeck: East Africa 1914-1918; The Russian Empire Strikes Back: Lodz 1914; Fateful Days: Marne Campaign of 1914; Gallipoli 1915: Churchill's Greatest Gamble); four are essentially tactical and almost Euro-ish (Wipers Salient, Les Poilus; Les taxis de la Marne; No Man's Land); and two are intriguingly hard to fit into other categories (I, Spy and Wings for the Baron). Tomorrow I'll take a look at these.
