READ 'EM AND WEEP

THE BIMONTHLY MAGAZINE ROUND-UP

"Strategy & Tactics" #'s 154, 156 and 157, from Decision Games

"Command" #'s 19, 20, and 21, from XTR

After a brief hiatus while we sorted through a whole bunch of Xmas games, Zine-Buster has returned to face the usual mixed bag of dust-gatherers and surprises. Magazine games are, with some startling exceptions that only serve to illustrate the general rule, the poor-trash cousins of the hobby. True, XTR's Inchon got a Charlie last year, but how many of you took THAT seriously? And how many of you played it more than once?

Therein lies the problem. Magazine games are like Pampers: instantly disposable but still hard to get rid of. The best assortment a magazine can come up with is a mix of quick-play, competition-level games that virtually disregard their subject matter, combined with a healthy sprinkling of off-the-wall, far-corners-of-the-earth simulation topics that one would think far more than twice before plucking off a shelf. I tend to agree with the XTR philosophy that magazine games should be highly accessible. As interesting as most of the Joe Miranda/S&T oeuvre has been over the past year, virtually all of these were just Too Much. 25 pages on the Russo-Turkish War? It takes longer to get through than the actual event! Magazine game designers should remember a basic principle of speech presentation: no one is quite as interested in what you're saying as you are. So, as the pundits are wont to say, when in doubt, KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid!

The assortment of six games from the past several months give us the best - and the worst - efforts in those divergent directions. We've omitted the latest entry in the Childe Schettler in Italy epic, Anzio, mostly because we never got our hands on a copy … but, at least partially, because we had little desire to wade through, yet again, another effort of Mr Schettler to dazzle and numb us with the amount of information he's collected over the years. His last two efforts were stultifying; if Anzio is an improvement, by all means tell your friends. We'll remain blissfully ignorant.

Even with all of that rather bitter assessment, we feel that subscribing to one - or both - of the game magazines is still one of the hobby's best buys. While Command continues to shine visually, if only sporadically creatively, S&T has shown some evidence of moving out of the Blands. The last couple of issues of both magazines were some of the better ones they've put out … at least one can say they're not dull. And for those of you who haven't noticed - or cared - that old warhorse, "Fire & Movement", is starting to show more than a bit of life. The last two issues contained lots of reviews which, if almost totally lacking in style and verve, were at least informative. Harried editor John Kisner appears intent on finding a marketable niche for "F&M", something which the lamentable "Moves" has yet to discern. There is much talk in and around Decision on what to do with the latter. However, despite the obvious solution - put it down like the tired old horse it is and distribute its few meritorious sections between "S&T" and "F&M" - Clan Cummins seems intent on keeping this verbal vegetable on as many life support systems as it can. Where's Jack Kervorkian when you really need him?

The three S&T entries under scrutiny here consist of a wedge of under-aged Kane/Cummins Cheese dropped between two slices of rather thick and doughy Miranda bread. To give Decision its due (if not its dues), they are not afraid - actually, they seem eager - to publish games that allow subscribers to take a peek at some of history's more arcane moments. The intrepid Carl Gruber says pretty much the same about #156, White Eagles Eastward, a simulation of the Russo-Polish War of 1920. This an intriguing, and not unimportant, topic whose enjoyability as a game and a simulation is ameliorated by sloppiness and poor development. With a little more care, this could have been a neat, playable item, as evinced by the 3 and 1/2 pages of errata needed just to get started!

Co-designers Tom Kane (any relation to Batman?) and Chris Cummins have given WEE a good sense of maneuver and surprise by omitting ZOC's and adding an exploitation phase. All is negated, however, by setting the map so far west that the Russian player can make little, if any, use of the huge expanses of the steppes that historically allowed him to retreat, reorganize and counterattack in almost every western war she fought. There is no off-map movement, and no sense of the Russian vastness that has oppressed and defeated nearly every invader. By the time the Russian player gets to throw in his crack konarmiya, it's not for a counterattack but just to keep the Russian in the game. Perhaps this is all the result of the usual magazine format shoe-horning, but it appears more carelessness than anything else. Also careless is the use of the communist "eagle sans crown" for Poland's national symbol. Hey Chris, how many Poles does it take to draw a crown? Obviously one too many. The result is a rather playable, interesting "game" with lots of fluidity and randomness that shortchanges reality for reasons known only to its creators.

S&T #154, The Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78, featured the Imperial Age system that found some well-earned popularity with the Franco-Prussian War issue. Joe Miranda's design theories combine both the military as well as the political battlegrounds, and there is a lot of food for thought in both this system and the one discussed below. The only problem is that Joe really needs a developer, one that can impart some simplicity to a game that has all the elegance of a mud wrestling contest. The Russo-Turkish War as a slice of history was a desultory exercise featuring two vast empires on the edge of extinction's precipice. As a game, RTW is certainly worth looking into if you enjoyed the Franco-Prussian issue, even more so because it sheds some light on a really obscure subject, much of whose roots lie exposed even today in the Bosnia-Serbia-Croatia mess. As far as a game situation, it all depends on how much glee you derive from watching the Ottoman Empire crumble into dust.

The other Joe Miranda work is the latest S&T, and the successor to the fairly popular Trajan, Roman Civil War. With some reservations, I liked the original system, which simulated a situation almost totally devoid of gaming interest. Here the situation is one just loaded and ready for players, with some of the best counters S&T has had in a long while. So why am I about to load my automatic carping machine? Why? The map, that's why! Forget Simonitch's artwork; it's serviceable without being memorable. It's the designer's map intent that raised my eyebrows so far I thought I actually had hair again. Miranda insists on his Ptolemaic vision of the Mediterranean - I say "his", because I have a copy of Ptolemy's maps, and they bear absolutely NO resemblance to the game map - an affectation that causes one to wonder what would have happened if Kandinsky or Dali had taken up cartography. The world is not what someone thinks it is, it's what it is. To represent anything else is nothing more than an exercise in pedantry. This through-a-glass-weirdly vision is not helped by a generic Roman road system that leaves out at least two important roads: the Via Valeria, linking Rome to Corfinum, and the Via Popillia, connecting Ariminium to Aquileia . Even worse, although the map gives us virtually all of "Turkey", where little of importance in the war occurred, Spain is completely absent. What? Not only was Hispania the sight of several campaigns and the largest battle of the war (Munda), but it was Ptolemy's recruiting base. What's going on here? It's like doing a game on the American Civil War and cutting off the map at the Potomac because the South didn't do much north of there anyway.

RCW is, fortunately - and despite some rather silly rules - kind of fun to play, giving the players much food for thought in terms of strategy. Personally, I'm not very big on Caesar as a military genius. I think he spent most of the Civil War blundering around the Mediterranean getting himself into potentially disastrous situations - e.g., Ruspina, Alexandria - from which only his not inconsiderable personal magnetism and courage allowed him to extract himself. Tactically he wasn't that much above the level of his turncoat lieutenant, Labienus. Carl Gruber found RCW quite enjoyable, although he did rail on about the attrition rules, wherein a player could lose an entire legion in traversing Italy, as well as the "Civis" unit rules, which he felt were a wrong-headed waste. I wasn't quite as enthusiastic, mostly because I felt that the really creaky combat system, combined with the old Igo-Hugo mechanics, provided little insight into ancient campaigns. Joe M really ladles it on with the tangential stuff here, giving us lots of political "events" and such (most of which are quite interesting, to be sure), producing a thick shell of chrome that only partially obscures the fact that there's not much going on underneath. In that sense, RCW is a lot like a hermit crab; without its protective shell it's got a survival rate measured in minutes.

Can't accuse "Command" of ever allowing THAT to happen. Issue #19, Port Arthur, was Command at it's clone-a-matic worst - Jim Petranovi, on GEnie, insists that XTR is wargaming's version of Muzak - taking a situation that can barely maintain even the most feeble level of player interest and jerry-rigging its round pegs into the XTR-mandated square system holes. This is a game that had been lying around the hallowed halls of gaming for quite some time, and its original form was supposedly quite different. E.g., I've been informed it used to include a naval module! Whatever it was before, it ain't much now. The most fascinating things about Port Arthur were the CRT, which was quite good and is used to much better effect in Blood & Iron, and the 8.15 Acceptance Rating it appears to have gotten (as per Command #21). I don't know what those gamers who gave it all those 8's and 9's were looking for (or what they were on), and, to be honest (writer code for "trust me"), I played it so long ago I can't remember exactly why I disliked it … but I do remember that it wasn't what I'm after in a game. Parenthetically, has anyone noticed that the triad of issue games - RTW-PA-WEE - together provide an interesting picture of the rising and falling military fortunes of Mother Russia in the transitional period prior to WWII?

All is not lost for #19, however. As further indication that XTR, regardless of its philosophies, knows how to treat its subscribers, they included in #19 a module (for Spartacus) on Pyrrhus' Invasion of Italy in 280 B.C., complete with counters! I'm not a big fan of Markowitz's ancient campaign system; I don't like area movement, and the mechanics are far too generic and uninvolving for me. However, it's a good introduction to this fascinating section of history, and Larry Hoffman's rendition of the Roman anti-elephant ox-carts are, alone, worth the price of admission.

And then with issues #20 and #21, Command breaks with "tradition" to offer two games that seem to indicate that they just might be moving away from their cookie-cutter approach:

Cortés and Blood and Iron (yes, the same title as the 3W game … and there's another one to come!!). These two issues, together and alone, make a Command sub a pretty sharp buy. The magazine covers for both issues are truly eye-catching, each in its own way, further reinforcing the realization that XTR understands so well the impact of strong graphics.

Cortés, a design from Dean Webb - I'd add "a man after my own heart," but that's a dangerous phrase to use in this game - covers the famous conquistador's final assault on the Aztec capital at Tenochtitlan. The counters are evocative, although the map is quite disappointing. Simonitch has chosen to represent Tenochtitlan with a very modern-looking, generic city-grid, even though there are maps available which could have allowed him to provide players with a truly stunning play surface. Missed opportunities are not unknown in this hobby. However little flavor the map has, there is none lacking in the game, even if you can still hear the hum of the XTR Muzak Death Ray at various times. Basically, any game in which you can gain a dieroll shift on the CRT by eating your opponent has got a lot going for it in my book. This is a game which pits totally different armies against each other, both battling for control of a city that can be reached only with great difficulty (across treacherously long causeways). Each unit type has its own flavor, and the open-ended turn mechanic allows players to explore tactics and strategies that are often obliterated by the "End Game at Turn 10" mentality. This is a bloody game whose tactical relationships reveal themselves best after a few run-thrus. My feeling is that the Spanish can't lose - the cautious, stolid and inexorable use of the juggernaut-like gunboats is the key - but that takes about 4-5 playings to figure out. And how many magazine games have you played that many times lately?

Hard on the heels of the Aztec demise is another good … actually, better than good; excellent! … issue, Blood & Iron, Paul Dangel's version of the battle of Konnigratz (1866, Prussians vs. Austrians). Interestingly, XTR has, for the first time in a long while, abandoned its large-hex, large-counter format and reverted to standard 16mm hexes and 1/2 inch counters. Both are good, if not great. What is best about the map is the inclusion of most of the charts, as well as an expanded Sequence which greatly reduces page rifling. The game system also seems to be only tangentially tainted by Die Clonemeisters. B&I uses a standard Igo-Hugo sequence, but with some interesting permutations, mostly having to do with artillery fire. Artillery is one of the few things the Austrians have going for them here, and, if used sagaciously, the Austrian guns can put a major dent into any Prussian offensive.

In the brief space allotted to us here, the highlights of this game include a simple, but effective combat resolution mechanic (cf. comments on Port Arthur) in which players can either retreat or disrupt units, alternating such decisions per unit. A Retreat by either player stops the resolution dead, but retreated units are greatly restricted in their offensive capabilities for the next hour (turn) or so. As such, the CRT reflects lower-level commanders' desire to either save their troops or sacrifice their cohesion in an interesting game of bluff. There are also good, albeit optional, rules for the variable (in terms of both time and location) arrival of the Prussian reinforcements, a nice handling of cavalry and its capabilities (or lack thereof), as well as an Austrian Command Control rule that reflects the inner turmoil of the Austrian high command. Some of the latter is a mite artificial, but it does create some rather tense situations. Less fortunate is an Austrian Reserve Rule, the benefits of which I failed to discern … so why put a corps in reserve? It also is rather unclear on exactly how "voluntary" reserve status is. Aside from that, and a typo or two - the rally range in the rules differs from the one on the chart - this is a clear, clean piece of work.

Best of all, B&I is an exciting game. The actual battle was fairly close - as the excellent accompanying article points out - and there are lots of alternate strategies for both players to try. I can easily see this as the one magazine game out of dozens that fosters repeat play. Blood & Iron is a game of which all involved can be right proud … and which you ought to get ahold of if you don't have a subscription.

I do note, with some bemused interest, Chris Perello/XTR's intention to "re-do" Terrible Swift Sword as Fateful Lightning (which, by the way, was the original title for the CoA Chancellorsville game). Chris mentions how disappointed he always was with the original TSS, which, as I look back, was a rather disjointed design. (Obviously, not that many gamers agreed with Chris, as is evidenced by the 30,000+ in sales both editions registered!!) Whatever, he does make some good points about how regimental systems should/could(?) work for this era. He'll encounter two problems: at a regimental level, lots of systems that you think should work, don't; and, then there's that Big Bugaboo Wall - Perceived Reality. TSS and its successors were popular not because they were the last word in regimental simulation, but because they were what the gamers thought was the last word … aside from being fairly easy to play for a big game.

I must also mention that I find Command far more fun to read than S&T … which doesn't make it better or more accurate; it's just more fun. Most of that is due to the editor/owners' ability to project their personalities into what they publish. you get the distinct feeling that there are real people running this operation, not a bunch of drones. Now, I have little liking for Ty's personal philosophy - I think that if/when Ty went to see "A Few Good Men" he'd root for Jack Nicholson - but at least he's up front with it (as distasteful and sophomoric as some of it can be). If you want to be creative, you have to put yourself out on the line. XTR does just that, and that's why it's fun. Got that, Joe?