Carolingian Conundrum

 

Charlemagne: Master of Europe

This solitaire game is a clever mechanical puzzle. The three-cup system is very interesting. I have the canvas map, and the chunky laser cut counters and artwork are really cool. The overall aesthetic is fantastic. The box is flimsier than I’d like, though. 

 

The game might be fun, but also might be tedious, punishing, a bit ahistorical, too random, and senseless in places. For instance, why would traveling around allied and historically friendly regions have to be conducted only as a forced march and why would that provoke a hostile reaction? It's also pretty difficult. Only played four games. No wins. Yet feels more or less solvable, like once you get it down you could optimize and game it but for me there are three major issues with Charlemagne, Master of Europe:

1.) Randomness can completely defeat you. From my experience with this, you can lose the game even while seeming to play well. That initial setup can significantly disadvantage the player right off the rip and it has nothing to do with performance or player decisions. One of my games, I pulled both End Turn chits with only one hostile cup draw between them and because of the random setup and the draws there was no way I could have avoided the almost immediate loss. Turn one. Game over. I did a forced march and lost the game. That's a pretty big bug in my book. One expects extra randomness in solo games, but to lose a game solely as a result of game randomness without reference to player's decisions, agency or performance is just bad design. Probably a bug that could've been solved mechanically. Makes you wonder if there are other less obvious issues with the machine.

2.) There’s no concrete reference to time here. Time is completely amorphous and that bothers me in a historical game. The player also always seems to be reacting rather than steering things which I feel doesn’t properly represent Charlemagne’s modus operandi. But maybe I’m not fully appreciating the designer’s intent. You, the player, aren’t competing with unruly German tribes or Arabs so much as competing against the historical Charles and I don’t know if I like that. Right or wrong, the emphasis is almost entirely on cash flow and combat and I think that’s sort of reductionist in terms of the net impact of the reign of Charles the Great. I assume the church and road building functions are proxies for his administrative reforms, but it seems to give the cultural impact short shrift. Court intrigue can crop up in the latter stages of a game but are dealt with statically, meaning, if you previously made enough money or beat up enough Saxons, your political rivals will fail. I don’t know if that’s a good representation of Frankish power politics. And it isn't particularly intriguing either.

 

3.) The tactical display. I know I'm in the minority on this and many games make use of this sort of thing, but I don't like these little abstract tactical display combat resolution things. It's tedious, boring, and fiddly. It’s just chucking dice on and on with minimal influence on the outcome from a player's "tactics." It interrupts the game and is distracting. Takes me out of the more important, to me, macro strategic part of the game and yet it seems to be the primary focus of the game, i.e. where the player invests the most time during actual play. It all takes place in one small corner of the board (Cruel Necessity does this too and I dreaded battles in that game for these reasons as well) and I think that’s an odd and off-putting design choice. Why make this big beautiful game map if the majority of the game is actually played in a small space in one corner of the board? I find myself wanting to avoid battles because they’re annoying and since it’s a core function of the game, this is obviously problematic.

I REALLY wanted to like this game. I wanted to love it, actually. Such high hopes.

In the end, the whole thing feels a bit forced. Like a retheming of a design that was intended to model a completely different set of circumstances, which I believe it is or was. Just a couple too many bits of sort of tacked on chrome here. The system doesn’t really suit the situation or theme, in my opinion. It was originally developed for Agricola, Master of Britain which I think would be a much better fit for these mechanics. And I think the original system was a tad simpler, which I'd find preferable. I also had a sense that I was being pushed in a certain direction and that might mean that with this game there is only one way to skin the cat. That would be wholly in keeping with this type of game; once solved, it' done, like a puzzle should be. One of the only tools to mitigate this effect is the introduction of randomness, but as pointed out before here, too much or the wrong kind of randomness can ruin the game experience and cause frustration.

 

Oldie but Goodie, Warts & All

 "Intruder" by Task Force Games. 

 

What's happening is I'm starting to rough up some new game materials. Part of the process will be playing through some solitaire games because I think that's what I'm planning to design, that is, a solitaire game or two. 

First up is "Intruder" from Task Force Games. I did a single play recently, but I've probably played this 7 or 8 times before over the course of a few years. Once or twice was played as a cooperative effort. In my humble opinion, it's an oldie but goodie, warts and all. 

To clarify, I'm not reviewing the game here or providing any detailed background on it. You can google that stuff. What I am doing is sort of logging my general impressions of the game, so here goes:

Intruder came out in 1980, long before Aliens or anything remotely resembling a franchise. Back when it was just Alien. In the game, the ship is called the "Prometheus" and there's an alternate scenario in this game that involves marines returning to the Prometheus knowing it's completely overrun with "intruders." Again, this came out in '80, a full 6 years before Aliens. But no one agrees with me when I try to convince them that this game influenced the course of the Alien story.

For me, one of the most striking characteristics of  this game is that's it's pretty easy to win, making it distinct from most solitaire games of this type that are usually difficult games in order to keep players engaged and enhance replayability. That said, I like winning. Most people do, if they're honest, and so for me that's actually a positive. In playing this, you usually win unless you get on a horrible roll streak or are completely out of touch with how to approach the situation.

This particular recent play in brief:
Engineers wasted a couple turns making useless prods. We did manage to cage and stow away a number of the roaming lab animals in the Lab. Science officers did some Inventorying leaving us with two blips left. We ganged up on them, cornered them and one of the COs took out the xeno (Stage 3, fast, strong, and immune to cold and vaccum) with a blaster. A good time was had by all. And no Panics.

Won with the +7 score.

The only real issues with the game as originally presented are the disorganized rulebook, the glowing orange Intruder counters and the compartments are just too small for all the counter shuffling required.

 
The rules are all there (sometimes only implicilty, though) and it's pretty simple so a thorough reading and play through solves the rulebook issue for the most part. (except "Cages go in the Lab!")

I have a method of using other pieces for the face down counters so I don't use the glowing neon intruder counters on the Prometheus map.

But honestly, they could have used the same size map, kept all the charts there and still increased the areas of the compartments. 

And the Prometheus map itself should have been darker overall for several obvious reasons. 

As for the game being too easy to win, the rules are simple enough that you'll have no problem making the game harder without disrupting the "system" such as it is. For example; start out the xenos at stage 4 or 5. Or make everything Fast or...

Also, I know there's at least one newer improved version of this game out there and that's great.

I still like this one, though. 

Mostly because I like actually winning a game once in a while!

more watercolors...

 "Up Unity to the Rabbit & Poultry"

 

"Up Unity to the Rabbit & Poultry" by Nate Dray

watercolor on paper, 16 x 22 inches

 

Hellwig's Conquest: A Tactical Game based on Chess Rulebook now Available.

 

This book now available on Etsy and ebay. Or direct from me.

Letter-sized, perfect bound, w/ color plates, 144 pages, $25 + shipping.

ISBN: 978-0-9822892-5-9

Hellwig's Conquest rulebook on ebay

Hellwig's Conquest rulebook on Etsy

Originally released in Germany in 1780 under the title Versuch eines aufs Schachspiel gebaueten taktischen Spiels von zwei und mehrern Personen zu spielen, this is probaby the oldest published set of modern wargame rules.

This book is a new English language translation of this classic set of groundbreaking game rules.

 

Hellwig's Conquest

What and why this book?

Hellwig's Conquest: A Tactical Game Based on Chess 

by Dr. Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig. 

A book translated from German by Nate Dray. 

ISBN: 978-0-9822892-5-9

 

I just published this book, or Diluvian Enterprises did, and it's been almost impossible to explain this little project to people. It's either because it's an unusual thing to do or that I'm terrible at explaining things. Probably a bit of both.

But let me try again here...

If one digs into the origins of current conventions employed in the design and play of wargames at the club, or in the classroom, kitchen, drawing room, parlor, library, man cave or church basement, one inevitably runs into the name Dr. Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig. It’s my contention that the modern wargame as we know and recognize it today really originated with the publication of his book Versuch eines aufs Schachspiel gebaueten taktischen Spiels von zwei und mehrern Personen zu spielen in Leipzig in 1780. At the time, you could probably also pick up a copy around Christmas in Brunswick. Either way, it’s the first appearance of something, of a game, that concerns itself with and regulates with written rules the things we use today to model war operations and make games or simulations. Before Hellwig, wargames were just variants of chess or Go type games.

As soon as I learned that this game existed I wanted to play it or at least understand how it was played and so spent a good bit of time looking for an English version of the rules. I searched and searched but couldn’t find one anywhere. Failing that, I decided to start translating them for myself, realizing along the way that other people might want to read them too. I’ll admit, I thought that with all the new smart translating software out there now that this would be an easy project. I was very wrong.

The original book is not written in the German language as we know it today. This book was penned long before the formation of the modern German state and before anything like a standardized German language existed. It's archaic regional German and I think - I think - it's a South Marchian dialect, but I could be completely wrong. Old-fashioned terms and ideas abound in this document and the original was printed in a really funky Gutenbergy typeface that was already long out of fashion even in 1780. Concepts of organization and presentation are primitive as well. Tables, lists, charts and reference can be somewhat difficult to parse.

And players are expected to make or have made 900 playing pieces and the game boards themselves. Actually, players are expected to have them made by craftsman along with a specially made table with compartments for storing the pieces and extendable shelves for holding lamps at the four corners of this custom eight and half by five foot table made exclusively for this game. If you want to avoid the tiresome task of setting up the game for yourself, the rules tell you that a competent domestic servant can be taught to set it up for you given patient instruction.

But most importantly, this book, when first published, was a first for many things. Primarily, it’s a popular press wargame book with an honest attempt at making a realistic warfare simulation. Making a board game that deals with and models things like line of sight, terrain, artillery and supply was completely new, novel and unprecedented at the time of publication as far as I can tell.