spacerumsfeld

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by spacerumsfeld

  1. Posted

    I'm going to come to the defence of War in the Pacific.

     

    Bravo!  I'm glad to see someone doing this.

     

    Sam, I love hearing from people who love this game.  I was thinking of writing a "comprehensive intro manual" to the game some years ago, but when I actually sat down to do it I realized I was way behind the curve of where I needed to be to write such a thing.  And I never got closer.

     

    That said, there are two parts of the game I wish had been abstracted. Firstly - China. A landwar stalemate that doesn't really have anything to do with the Pacific War except tie up Japanese troops. I would have been quite happy to just have that represented by an off map box.

     

    I never really knew what to do with China in the game, and still don't.  I suspected there was no way to win.  Glad to see my surmise was correct.

     

    Mark Hermans Empire of the Sun is quite good. It really is all about airfields, airfield = unsinkable aircraft carrier. This comes out in that game.

     

    I haven't played EotS in years.  But I remember there were some problems with the game initially - was it all fixed by errata?

  6. Posted

    Having played some Vietnam '65 now I'm in awe of Rob's swift mastery of the game. I'm playing the regular difficulty, and with each new game I think I've figured out what I need to do to win only to be thwarted by some other flaw in my plan. 

    Yeah tell me about it.  I played it more than Rob, I think, and was not nearly as successful in my efforts.  I haven't played for a while (waiting for the patch, now scheduled for the "first half of May") but I won once on Veteran, total.  So maybe Rob should have been in charge in Southeast Asia...

  7. Posted

    Hi folks!  Interesting episode.  It seems like you guys weren't too keen on this game.  I've been trying to consume any and all WW1 media as of late.  I just finished Fall of Giants which is a historical fiction book regarding the events up to and including WW1.  It's not exactly a reliable source but it was entertaining nonetheless.

     

    At this point I have two questions for the community here: 1) Can someone recommend me a good WW1 game?  I've been looking at Commander: The Great War (I know there was a show on this not too long ago), as well as Battle of Empires 1914-1918.  The John Tiller game piqued my interest but after listening to the podcast I'm a little deterred.  Any suggestions or thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

     

    and; 2) Would you peeps mind recommending me some other WW1 media?  Doesn't have to be video/war game specific.  Any books, movies, shows, podcasts, etc.  Really anything.  As I mentioned I just finished Fall of Giants, I've read All Quiet on the Western Front, and I'm currently listening to the BBC WW1 at home podcast.  Again, any suggestions or thoughts would be welcomed!

     

    Keep up the great work 3MA -- you guys rock!

     

    For WWI media, I think there are several essential pieces:

     

    1.  There is a Channel Four series based on Hew Strachan's history.  It's similar to Ken Burns' style, but more streamlined.  This is the best video documentary on the war I have seen.  There was a 4-disc set from Image Entertainment and a 3-disc reissue from Entertainment One.  I have the older one and from the reviews the newer one may have better technical specs, but the content is the same.

     

    http://www.amazon.com/First-World-War-Complete/dp/B0009S2K9C/

     

    http://www.amazon.com/First-World-War-Complete-Series/dp/B00IS6WPT2/

     

    2.  Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August was published in 1962, won the Pulitzer Prize, and over 50 years later is still the best book ever on the origins of the war and the first months up to the Marne.  It reads like a novel but has the analytical depth of a monograph.  Possibly the best book ever written about the First World War.  There is no substitute.  

     

    http://www.amazon.com/Guns-August-Pulitzer-Prize-Winning-Outbreak/dp/0345476093/

     

    3.  Sir Alistair Horne is a prominent British historian of France who has written several classic books, but one of interest to you would be his celebrated work on Verdun, The Price of Glory.  Horne is an accomplished historian, brilliant storyteller, and his command of French is superlative.  He was able to interview many participants at the time, and his access to the sources was unprecedented.  He wrote a great book.

     

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Glory-Verdun-1916/dp/0140170413

     

    If you watch that video and read those two books (one on the origins and its ultimate turning point, and the other on one of its iconic moments) then you will be better educated on the First World War than 99.9% of the people you may meet. ;)

     

    As for a video game on the war, I will leave that to others.  To be honest, I'm not sure there is one I'd recommend.  I remember liking Frank Hunter's Guns of August 1914-1918 from Matrix http://www.matrixgames.com/products/331/details/GunsOfAugust1914-1918 but besides that I think the offerings are lacking.  If you really want to play a game about WWI, play Paths of Glory http://www.gmtgames.com/p-426-paths-of-glory-5th-printing.aspx or at least watch the movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050825/ ;)

  8. Posted

    You can hide weapons counters by going to the View and clicking Weapons off they explain a lot of the complaints in the Designer Notes ;).

     

    While you can turn the Weapons off, they only disappear from the map view, so you're still tripping over them when you have units in the same hex.  And the map view gets these ugly squares that are almost worse than having the weapons there.  I don't think it helps much, but you're right to point it out.

     

    But my objection is to the design element more than the implementation.  While I understand the economics of these games, I think that having this in the game is a poor design choice, because it is an element that is irrelevant to the historical gameplay.  The implied thesis in the Squad battles series is that squad-level warfare can be modeled by essentially the same rule set whether it is 1965 or 1915.  I don't think that's really a supportable thesis.  

     

    I have read the designers notes, but again, my experience of the design effects is different from their intended effects, I think.  The designers can explain all they want, and I do like reading about their reasoning and decision-making, but ultimately it has to be an entertaining game.   :)  It was for Rob, and less so for me and Troy, I think.

  9. Posted

    sclpls makes an excellent point, I think, although I haven't played half of the games he mentions.  But I'd argue that Civ4 has a certain boardgame sensibility to it.  One of my top five games of all time, Imperialism II, could easily be a boardgame.  I think part of it is designers' inability to combine mechanics with replayability, and that has a lot to do with not only making the game possible for an AI to play well, but giving the game enough scope that it doesn't feel like a puzzle-solving exercise.  If games like the Shenandoah Studios Crisis in Command series had good AI, I think I could play them forever.

  10. Posted

    However, your episode has perked my interest.  But when I checked the MMP website I was surprised to find that neither the ASL rule book nor the core module you mentioned, Beyond Valor, are even available for sale.  The MMP website simply says that they are out of stock, without any information as to when they might be available again.  Is this normal for them?  Does anyone have any idea how frequently MMP re-prints/re-releases these items?  Maybe there focus is primarily on just servicing their existing customer base.

     

    They definitely run out of stock on items frequently.  My suspicion is that they have limited cash flow to reprint and keep large inventories of different products, so they have to balance new releases with the need to reprint base titles.  I'm sure if they could keep enough inventory on hand to satisfy every customer's order of any product, they would.

     

    That said, these products are all available from multiple secondary vendors, as well as eBay and Boardgamegeek Marketplace.

  11. Posted

    First, thank you for your always interesting podcast. At the beginning of this episode the assertion is made that at Omaha Beach the men didn't hang around waiting for the leaders to get them to move. But as it happens I am just reading "the dead and those about to die" by John McManus and he is asserts that that is exactly what did happen. Namely, men were generally pinned down by fire in difficult positions on the beach and it was up to the NCOs, lieutenants, and Higher officers to get them to move, often by leading by example. To eve, in fact, give speeches sometimes that convinced the men that they must move. E.g., ...there are "only two types of men on this beach: those dead and those about to die." .. (So get moving). So sometimes the caricatures of leadership are not so far off :)

    I support the assertion posted by LHughes41!

  14. Posted

    It was a great interview. With respect to the Stalingrad vs. Vietnam thing, though, I assume part of the reason games showed up so quickly for Stalingrad is that the US wasn't directly involved.  I don't imagine the Russians or the Germans were making many games about Stalingrad for quite a while afterwards.

     

    I guess I used a poor example - D-Day and Bulge games came out around this time as well, in which the US was directly involved.  But good point about Stalingrad.

  20. Posted

    This is going to be part of an ongoing series called "Thinking about history, talking about games" in which I explore other historical topics with game designers.  Your feedback is important, because the more (or less) that people enjoy this format, the more (or less) likely there will be further ones.  But there are for sure two more coming up, at least - they're already recorded.

  21. Posted

    Across the Dnepr had some very serious balance issues when it came out, as I recall.  I never got around to giving it a second look after release.

     

    I'm glad people enjoyed that episode - I was kind of nervous about spending a whole hour on a game from 2003 that I was sure most listeners hadn't played.  But I think it's a landmark wargame for all the reasons I mentioned on the podcast.

     

    I got about halfway through Stahel's book and got distracted, so I'll have to go back and finish it.

     

    We could do a whole show about Combat Mission by itself.

  25. Posted

    I am now the happy owner of an iPad so I was finally able to play this game. So fantastic! Between this and Eclipse I've been getting a lot of excellent strategy gaming in lately. Can't wait to see Shenandoah Studios's next effort.

    Great to hear it.  El Alamein is currently in playtesting.  I have been debating getting in on the playtest (which is being done as a boardgame) vs letting myself be surprised on release.