Best and Worst of 2013

With 2013 coming to a close, it's as good a time as ever to look back over the games I've played, and decide on the ones I loved the most.  These won't necessarily be games that came out in 2013.  Just games that occupied the greatest mindshare over the year.  The games I was most excited about getting to play, or puzzling out new strategies for.

Of course, there are also the games that were most of a let down.  Games I got extremely excited for, that almost immediately flopped.  I've played them once or twice, and they've since sat in a drawer, unlikely to ever emerge again.  Or I was very excited to try them at a convention, and immediately hated them.

Stickering the Austrian Army for Commands & Colors: Napoleonics

 

Such a cathartic evening. Nothing beats applying a few hundred stickers to wooden blocks for an hour or so.

Commands & Colors: Ancients - Greece & Eastern Kingdoms Review

I'm wrapping up my second play through of all the scenarios for the first expansion to Commands & Colors: Ancients.  There is also a reprint of this expansion due any day now!  So I figured it would be a great time for a review.  I won't lie, I may have some rose tinted glasses for this game.  I'm quite open that Commands & Colors: Ancients is nothing short of my favorite game ever.  From the moment I first played it, I absolutely fell in love with it, and every game I play just brings me new appreciation for the system.

Greece & Eastern Kingdoms is published by GMT Games, and was originally released in 2006.  It adds 2 new armies, the titular Greece and the Eastern Kingdoms.  It also includes 21 scenarios, covering a span of time from roughly 500 BC to 200 BC.

Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Review

Commands & Colors: Napoleonics was released in 2010 by GMT Games and was designed by Richard Borg.  It was the 4th game in the Commands & Colors series I've played, if you count Battles of Westeros.  I snatched it up in 2012 because I was worried about it going out of print like so many of the Commands & Colors: Ancients releases have.  I wasn't intending to play it immediately, nor did I have much interest in the Napoleonic era.  I just craved more GMT based Commands & Colors.

But still, I stickered the blocks, I read the rules, and then I was dying to play it.  Then I started reading up on some Napoleonic history.  Before I knew it I had completely shelved Ancients (for the time being), so I could play through all the scenarios in this game.  It is remarkable to me how relatively minor rule changes, over top a strong set of core mechanics, can completely alter the character of a game.  Napoleonics plays almost identically to Ancients, but with enough chrome tweaked to reflect an entirely different epoch.

Memoir 44 Review

Memoir 44 was one of the earliest games in the Commands & Colors series by Richard Borg.  The base game is set on the western front of World War II.  It was released in 2004 by Days of Wonder, and was chiefly aimed at new gamers unfamiliar with wargames.

I came to it significantly later, in 2012, when I told a friend of mine Commands & Colors: Ancients had a World War II version.  She purchased it quickly and we went on to play it regularly.  At first I didn't care for it much.  It appeared to lack the probing, almost dancing gameplay I had come to love in later entries to the Commands & Colors series.  However as we made our way through the scenarios included in the game, I grew to appreciate it more and more for it's own unique flavor.

Commands & Colors: Ancients, Part 2

Long term strategy, short term strategy, both or neither?

In terms of trying to concretely plan ahead, I'd have to say this game rewards thinking ahead about two or three turns.  Three turns is just the most you can really count on.  One turn to prepare.  One turn to launch the attack.  Then one more turn to try to follow up with that attack if they aren't destroyed or driven off in a counter attack.

Longer term planning can be helpful.  Getting all your troops into a mutually supporting formation or good terrain for the assault you know must be coming never hurts.  And it always helps to have a vague awareness of how many troops you want in each section, and trying to maintain cards in your hand to command them.  But that comes down to more of an intuitive feel for the game than anything you can discretely logic out.

In the short term, the positioning of your troops and the order in which you attack can have profound implications.  I'd say the bulk of the strategy is in the short term pairing up of troops to assault one another, the order you choose to execute their attacks.  I've seen even the best laid plans fall apart because someone allowed the enemy to escape before their strongest attacks could be brought to bare.  Which often results in a crushing counter attack.

Commands & Colors: Ancients, Part 1

Commands & Colors: Ancients came out in 2006 from GMT Games, and was designed by Richard Borg as part of his ever growing Commands & Colors series.  It is one of my favorite games.  I suppose I shouldn't qualify that.  It is my favorite game.  No exceptions.  I've logged over 50 plays, and I can perceive of no point in time where I will have gotten board with it.  But that does not spare it from my critical eye.