Steve Zaccardi

A long time player and collector of board games and RPG's. Specializing in war games, conflict simulations, and historical subjects, I will play anything once, and some things for years.

Gaming the Cold War

 Board Games  No Responses »
Feb 252012
 

This past weekend I played my first game of Twilight Struggle. This GMT Games published board game has a large cadre of fans among the board gaming community. On boardgamegeek.com it is the top rated board game, war game, and strategy game with a stunning 8.32/10 score.

Recently, I had the opportunity to stop by my favorite Canadian game store, J & J Cards & Collectibles in Waterloo Ontario. You will not find a more well stocked brick and mortar store anywhere. I love going in and browsing for an interesting title, one which I may have had my eye on for a while. When I find one it sort of feels like I’m the hunter bringing home a kill from a long hunting expidition. Lucky for me, I spotted several copies of Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition on the self. With all of the gusto of a cold war arms supplier eyeing a shoulder launched anti-air missile, I eagerly snapped up a copy.

I have at the time of this writing only played the game once and I feel several plays must be completed to give me the full sense of opening, mid-game, and end-game strategies. But I think I have enough of the feel to see several very positive elements to the game that give me a hint as to why so many players think so highly of Twilight Struggle. I found that the fluidity of play was well maintained from turn to turn. The allocation of operations points for player actions on the board from the cards in hand provide a good source for the fuel of conflict. The selection of a card from your hand to play as a single “headline” event for the turn gives players a challenge to prioritize their hand of cards against the current situation on the board. There are scoring cards within the card sets, one for each early, mid, and late war eras, that when played force a scoring round for a given geographic area on the world map. For example, Middle East scoring will score for the players based on the situation on the map at that moment. Knowing when to play a scoring card is a key element to your overall performance in the game.

I played this game with my fourteen year-old daughter. Something that may not immediately be obvious to us older gamers are the rich lessons in history afforded by Twilight Struggle. My daughter does not have the sense of fear or the feeling of potential confrontation that existed for those growing up and living during that period of our history. Growing up in South Florida, I was very aware of the cold war; our neighbors had built fallout shelters during the Cuban missile crisis and nearby Air Force and Naval Air Stations attested to our readiness for conflict. The cards of the game represent historical events, people, policies, and places. Often she would ask me questions about a particular card and what happened around the situation depicted on it. The designers even include a reference in the back of the rulebook that gives more historical detail on cards included in the game. I would even recommend Twilight Struggle as teaching tool for advanced classes in modern history.

Well blended features and mechanics that flow together typically indicate a high quality design. Twilight Struggle achieves both. I am sure that Twilight Struggle will achieve a special place on my own family game shelf and will be a contest that is revisited fondly for many years to come.

Making Game Miniature Movement Easy

 Board Games  No Responses »
Jan 132012
 

Those of you who follow BattlePlay on twitter know that one game we return to often is BattleLore. Richard Borg’s Command and Colors is a great system for combat abstraction; players get the feel of large scale battles without the complexity of typical war game simulations. Two of the costs of entry to wargaming has always been the time involved in game setup and piece logistics. By piece logistics I am referring to the time invested in moving pieces about the board, straightening them when they become misaligned, and the general activities around keeping the gaming battlefield organized. These piece logistics are inherent in both counter and miniature wargaming.

BattleLore utilizes miniatures to represent troop units; four miniatures for infantry units and three larger miniatures for mounted units. During our games, whenever units are moved about the board, it is a certainty that the individual miniatures become misaligned, often ending up in other hexes and other orientations from the desired. At times I’ve noticed players becoming visibly frustrated while the unit they are moving becomes a pile of figures lying in and around the target hex. Well, I decided something had to be done about this. The money and time invested in BattleLore made it more imperative to improve the enjoyment of the game while reducing the annoyance of piece logistics.

Enter the magnetic base. After evaluating several prototypes I came upon a combination of inexpensive and easily accessible magnets for use as both the unit bases and the figure bases. ProMAG brand magnetic business card sized magnets with adhesive backs make an excellent source for a unit base. They can easily be cut to size for either the four figure infantry bases or the three figure mounted bases. Leave the adhesive strip intact for a smooth gliding bottom. The top you can paint to match whatever board color you will be using the base on or whatever color strikes your fancy. For the BattleLore boards I used FolkArt Grass Green daubed on using a foam brush.

For the figure bases I used the ProMAG 0.5” strip magnets again cut to size. squarers for the infantry bases and a bit longer of a rectangle for the mounted units. The magnets on the unit bases will snap to the unit base with enough strength to keep the figure on the base but not enough such that removing the unit to record losses is difficult. I find that slight pressure on one figure will slide the entire unit around the board easily. I bought the magnets I needed for a base game of BattleLore and a few expansions from Blick Art Supply for a reasonable cost.

This system could be used for any miniature game that suffers from burdensome piece logistics. Give it a try and let us know in the comments what new applications you find. Given the creativity of board gamers I expect to see improvements and configurations I haven’t thought of!

There is no stopping storage of this magnitude!

 Board Games, Game Commentary  No Responses »
Dec 082011
 

Playing and owning boardgames is a wonderful hobby many of us share. Countless hours are spent on the logistics of this hobby: rules reading, setup, break down, and organization. For those of us with large, multi-piece board games organization can be a challenging task. The industry and our own invention has given us many techniques from the old SPI plastic counter trays, to zip-lock baggies. I remember back in the ancient days using styrofoam cups covered with tinfoil to keep counters organized.

Things become even more difficult when we want to take our favorite games on the road and play them at a gaming store or friends house, al the while keeping track of where the components are, having the ones you want handy at easy reach without everything becoming a complete pile of mess.

BattleLore from Fantasy Flight Games is a prime example of a board game that can go horribly wrong when it comes to transport and play away from home. The base game with a few expansion thrown in can grow to over 300 figures; along with the accompanying unit banners and game cards, the transport of the materials for a serious game session can be daunting.

Over at Board Game Geek you can peruse through the picture gallery for BattleLore and see what other players are doing for storage and transport. These ideas are not just for BattleLore, but they give you the capability to apply these solutions to any large scale board game.


After a bit of research and thought, we decided to go with the fishing tackle box as our form factor. For this we selected the Plano 7771 model. First and foremost it was selected due to its size. The 7771 is a ginormous (size here) with five primary storage
areas. Under the see-through top lid is a compartmented section with removable separators. To the right of this is a large compartment beneath a hinged lid. The top lid opens to reveal a tray for storage of flat items (rulebooks) and includes a small storage box. The central drop down transparent door holds four separate tackle boxes, all compartmented with adjustable dividers. To the right of the drop down door is another lidded storage compartment.

Being able to place the BattleLore mounted map board into the lidded tray was a must. The board almost fit within the try except two small plastic ribs prevented the map from sliding down into the case. Thankfully, the plastic construction was easily modified to remove the two ribs; an xacto knife and a little scoring along the edges and the ribs were easily and cleanly removed from the box. After this simple modification the map slid easily into place. These two cuts to remove the superfluous ribs were the only modification we needed to make to the 7771.

The four large removable tackle boxes provide an excellent way to store miniatures or other game components or tokens. The size of the pieces can be adjusted for by repositioning the separators to allow for more room. In the example of the BattleLore miniatures, greater space was allowed for the larger mounted units. Obviously, some units will be too big for these compartments. The BattleLore dragons are an example of this. For larger units the solution is to use one of the two large compartments to the right of the drop door or top lid.

Another very positive aspect of the Plano system is the removable tackle boxes. If needed, additional boxes can be purchased that can be used for armies (goblins/dwarves) or other figures and when they are required for a particular gaming session you slide out the boxes containing the figures you don’t need and slide in those that are. It’s a modular storage system!

Overall, the Plano 7771 worked very well for transport of our massive BattleLore collection. Transport of exactly what we need to play, plus all the extra doodads that do along with board gaming such as extra dice, pens, tools etc. can be carried with eas in one organized box.

The Plano 7771 will set you back around $65 US. Considering the use and reuse of this box, its an investment that pays off for the avid gamer on the move.

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