Skip to main content

Quick looks April / May 2016 - Legion Games part I: Quatre Batailles en Espagne

Personally I think the term 'review' should only really be used if you have played a game through several times, ideally opposed, and feel qualified to make some comment on the games balance. Most games that don't work for me are never going to get played multiple times. In fact I probably won't play them right through even once if they are a lot of work. Over the past couple of weeks I have been playing two titles from Legion Games, Dien Bien Phu the Final Gamble and Quatre Batailles en Espagne. I really like Quatre Batailles but I didn't really get in to Dien Bien Phu.

I going to start doing this new quick looks format for games I have only spent a few hours with and only played once. It allows me to give a general impression to the read of what the game is trying to do but falls short of a full review.


Quatre Batailles en Espagne


I played the Salamnque battle and it took me about 3-4 hours with just the base ruleset. The system plays a lot like La Bataille light (La Bat being a series from Marshall Enterprises and Clash of Arms games) the key different being this game as 30 minute rather than 15 minute turns. In effect the turn length produces very decisive results to actions giving the game a very action orientated feel. A cavalry charge will produce bedlam, an infantry melee will mostly result in one side breaking and artillery at close range really knocks holes in the regimental formations.



I am probably going to stick with this series for my Napoleonic fix it gives me a convincing simulation but with a shorter rule book than some of its competitors. It also plays rather quickly with the basic rules. The advance rules at a read seem a bit ambiguous in some areas, but not in a way that particularly bothers me. They will raise the realism, particularly in terms of command and control IN the base rules you can do whatever you want and it results in a short battle as both sides can get the attacks they want committed.

Visually, the maps are attractive and in the Legion style. The counters have some small numbers on them, and quite a few different numbers too. They are elongated and you flip them depending on whether  a unit is in line or column giving the game a nice visual effect.

My main criticism at this stage would be the casualty chart. You can use counters to track hits, but this adds to counter density and they could easily be confused with disruption counters. The game comes with a chart listing each unit and its casualty hits. If the boxes were bigger they could hold a cube, as it is you really need to photocopy it and use a marker pen. Its a shame a booklet of paper copies was not included. The only other issue I see some folks having is the setup rules can be a little vague. You get instructions like setup X division halfway between this land mark the south map edge. You can work it out but I could see ultra competitive types making an argument out of it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Quick Looks: Cimean War Battles - Tchernaya River

 A quick one today I traded off Across the Narva by Revolution Games (should post something on this) for an oldish (2000) copy of an S&T magazine. The mag came with two battles reprinted from the 1978 Quad game on the Crimean War. The full Quad also contained Inkerman and Balaklava, this magazine version just has Tchernaya River and Alma. Initial setup Early SPI games (and actually GDW and AH come to think of it) of the 70s tend to have lots of rules you already know. I go, U go, movement, fire, melee, rally, and most of the rules are standard. Command and control rules and friction of war arrived a lot later. To couter this I have added a simple house rule. For each division (units are brigates and regiments, about 2-8 per division) roll. On a 1 in 6 movement is halved unless the unit can charge, in which case it must charge the nearest enemy.  A simple easy to apply rule for generating those light brigade charges. You could also easily convert this to a chit pull game by division

Quick Looks; Red Star / White Eagle

I generally hate it when people describe designs or ideas in games as dated, because many of the most innovative games  are older than I am. Equally it implies there is something innately good about new designs, which I don't think there is. Dune is arguably the best multiplayer 'war' boardgame and the 70s basic DnD is in my view still the best RPG. I wasn't born until the late 80s and didn't discover these things to the mid 2000s so this isn't nostalgia doing my thinking, its just that some old ideas are better than new ones, despite our apparent 'progress'. Back when Roger B MacGowan did cool art house covers But having said all this Red Star / White Eagle is a dated game design. And this matters if you are looking at popping £70 on a new reprint of it from Compass Games. I am a wary cheapskate so I picked up a second hand copy with a trashed box of ebay for £20. It was worth it, but only just. Poles have just been creamed on the south we

Wilderness War is probably the best CDG (review)

One attribute of a good war game is that it opens up rather than narrows down the more you play it. Each time you play you see there is more strategic depth than you thought there was. When I first started playing Wilderness War, a card driven wargame design (CDG) on the French Indian War by Volko Runke, I thought it was simply a case of the British building a large kill stack and marching it up the Hudson and the French trying to get enough victory points (vps) from raiding to win before the inevitable. The outcome would likely be decided by card play and who got the reinforcement cards when they needed them. The game is afoot.  Four games later I have realised that this is not the case. Yes the British will sometimes win by marching a big army up the Hudson and sieging out Montreal, but a lot of the time things will play out quite differently. Maybe the French strike first, perhaps the British realise that going up the Hudson is going to be a slog try another route. Ei