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Board Games

Owned by Nathan Wailes
Last updated: Jun 16, 2025

How to get into tabletop wargames

  1. Play PC games that work in a similar way to tabletop games.

    • Decisive Campaigns, John Tiller’s Panzer Campaigns

  2. Watch YouTube videos about tabletop wargames.

    • reviews, rules explanations, AARs (turn-by-turn or after the entire game is over), full playthroughs

  3. Play PC implementations of tabletop wargames.

    • You can check the section I have dedicated to this for more information / ideas.

  4.  

Ways to play board games on a computer

Vassal

How to ease into using Vassal

  1. First, I’d recommend that you get experience playing Steam and/or mobile implementations of board games or board-game-like games, like Risk, Axis & Allies, Twilight Struggle, Race for the Galaxy, Fort Sumter.

    1. These have in-game tutorials, nice animations, music, good graphics, etc.

    2. This can help ease you into some board game concepts you might not be familiar with if you’re jumping into Vassal without a lot of previous board game experience. Things like having different phases, playing cards to take actions, rolling dice to determine outcomes, cubes and meeples, victory points, tracks, CRTs, etc.

  2. Next, I’d recommend that you get experience playing browser-based board game implementations that guide you through the game’s phases and limit your actions to what you’re legally allowed to do.

    1. This will ease you into the experience of needing to refer to the user manual frequently while learning the rules, needing to look stuff up on player aids, and needing to play some throwaway games to get the feel for the rules.

    2. The graphics aren’t as slick as the Steam/mobile versions, there’s no music, no tutorials. But you get access to a lot more games than if you stuck with Steam/mobile board games.

    3. These are sites like Rally-The-Troops (the best UI IMO), Yucata, BoardGameArena, BrettspielWelt.

    4. RTT has easily-accessible HTML versions of the rules of the games it carries, which makes searching for stuff much easier than if you’re using a PDF manual without searchable text.

      1. https://www.mcssl.com/store/danverssengames/vassal/pdf-games/solitaire - These aren’t free but they’re guided versions of some highly-regarded solo wargames.

  3. Finally, take on using Vassal itself:

    1. You can download the Tic-Tac-Toe module and get practice playing a game locally, via PBEM, and live.

    2. You can try some solo games to get more experience with Vassal before getting into multiplayer games if you’re worried about bothering your opponent with basic questions (although honestly, Vassal’s UI isn’t that complicated, and you may get bored playing by yourself).

      1. Vassal modules designed for exactly one player

      2. Singleplayer games I found that seem like good fits to help you get comfortable with Vassal:

        1. (For reference, Risk has a BGG complexity of 2.07)

        2. Intro:

          1. Micro Space Empire - BGG - 6.5 rating, 10 Min, 1.22 complexity

          2. 12 Patrols - BGG - 6.3 rating, 5-15 Min, 1.78 complexity

          3. Solitaire Chess - Not on BGG - 15 Min

          4. Delve: The Dice Game - BGG - 6.4 rating, 20 Min, 1.26 complexity

          5. Aces of Valor - BGG - 8.2 rating, 30 Min, 2.50 complexity

          6. Shadows Upon Lassadar - BGG - 6.6 rating, 30 Min, 2.25 complexity

          7. Sunburst City Transport - BGG - 6.6 rating, 30 Min, Unknown complexity

          8. Bomber Boys - BGG - 7.7 rating, 15-30 Min, 1.80 complexity

          9. The Way of the Warrior (Second Edition) - BGG - 7.3 rating, 20-60 Min, Unknown complexity

          10. Utopia Engine - BGG - 6.9 rating, 30-60 Min, 2.03 complexity

          11. Corvette Command - BGG - 8.1 rating, 30-90 Min, 2.00 complexity

          12. Village Builder - BGG - 7.4 rating, 40-100 Min, 2.00 complexity

        3. Intermediate:

          1. Agricola, Master of Britain - BGG - 7.1 rating, 60–90 Min, 2.54 complexity

          2. The Hunters - BGG - 7.7 rating, 120 Min, 2.54 complexity

          3. Beneath the Med: Regia Marina at Sea 1940-1943 - BGG - 8.0 rating, 120-180 Min, 2.42 complexity

          4. The Castles of Burgundy - BGG - 8.5 rating, 70-120 Min, 2.94 complexity

          5. Ambush - 180–240 Min, 3.26 complexity

          6. Target for Today - BGG - 8.1 rating, 45–90 Min, 3.34 complexity

          7. D-Day at Omaha Beach - 120–480 Min, 3.47 complexity - Note that you can get a guided computerized version at the DVG website.

        4. Advanced:

          1. Fields of Fire - BGG - 7.9 rating, 60–300 Min, 4.24 complexity

    3. You can then try multiplayer games:

      1. The best way to find people to play with is to join the official Vassal discord server and the Vassal PBEM discord server and post in one of the LFG (“Looking for a game”) channels. It’ll probably be quicker and easier for you to find a game if you reply to someone else’s request for an opponent than if you post your own request.

      2. How to think about Live games vs. PBEM: Live games are useful (especially with a voice call) because you can ask for help immediately if you don’t know how to do something. If your partner can’t record a screenshare video showing you how to do everything, then it’s probably best to start with a Live game to get help with the UI for whatever game you’re using. However, Live games have the disadvantage that you’ll feel pressured to make decisions quickly, which can make the game feel less pleasant (in my experience anyway). I like that when I play an asynchronous game I can take my time reading the rules for whatever decision I need to make.

      3. I found people recommending Battle for Moscow as a good PBEM game for beginners to wargaming to start with because the rules are simple and each player only needs to send 7 emails.

        1. You can find an online implementation of Battle for Moscow that’ll let you play against a bot here: Battle for Moscow

      4. Core controls / methods:

        1. Alt + Left click will ping a certain part of the UI (normally the main map but it also works for auxiliary windows) and center other players' UI on that point. So this is a key way to make it easy for other players to follow what you’re doing when it’s your turn or when you’re taking some action.

        2. It seems common for people to write a comment in the log when the dice are going to be rolled that summarizes what the roll is for.

          1. In my Last Hundred Yards game, IIRC we’d write a comment describing who was attacking whom with each roll.

          2. When I played Downfall of the Third Reich, my opponent would write a simple “X / Y” comment that summarized the die roll modifiers(?) for each side prior to each side rolling a D6.

        3. PBEM:

          1. Create a channel in the Vassal PBEM by commenting in the “lfg-discussion” channel like this:

            1. @grogs Could we please get a room for <the game you want to play>. <then tag every player you want included, like @nathan1234 @john1234>

          2. After loading a log file, “you will need to click the play button on the top left of the map screen to step through the log file. Once it is finished you will be prompted to create a new log file. Increment the number in the file name and then complete your turn. Once your turn is finished you will need to select End Log File from the File menu to save the file. You can then upload it [to the Vassal PBEM Discord server] for [your opponent] to look at.”

Wargameroom

  • http://www.wargameroom.com/

  • This seems to be an alternative to Vassal which always enforces the rules of the games it covers, whereas in Vassal I think most of the time the rules are not fully enforced. So it's kind of like a cross of Vassal and Rally the Troops, where it's a downloadable program like Vassal, but it fully enforces the rules like Rally the Troops does.

Pros and cons of tabletop games vs. PC games

  • I spent a while learning about tabletop games to get a sense of what they have to offer that you can’t get from PC games.

  • Note that there’s a spectrum of options:

    1. pure tabletop games - physical components, played in-person (or possibly via a video call, but that can be very difficult with many games that have small text or hidden information).

    2. Tabletop Simulator / Vassal, where it’s often a pure simulation of a tabletop game with no automation to help you, or there might be some automation available to guide the game along. You can still make a mistake interpreting the rules.

    3. Rally-The-Troops / Wargameroom / Steam editions of games (like Risk, Axis & Allies, various niche wargames), where you’re playing the tabletop game but guided through the whole process. There’s no way for you to not follow the rules.

    4. Pure PC game, where it was never intended to be a tabletop game, and has features / complexity that couldn’t work as a tabletop game.

Advantages of playing tabletop games

  1. Variety. Tabletop games require less technical knowledge to develop than PC games, and so it seems more common / easier for non-technical people (like historians) to develop tabletop games than PC games. This seems to lead to a wider variety of gameplay / themes than you typically find in PC games.

    1. On the other hand, it is possible to develop a game as just a Vassal module. But since there doesn’t seem to be as much of a market for paid Vassal modules, it seems like the market for physical tabletop games is what is motivating developers.

  2. Modability. Tabletop games are extremely easy to mod. It’s extremely easy to add rules, remove rules, change rules, create new maps, etc.

    1. See the note above about this being possible in Vassal modules.

    2. Two analogies for non-gamers to understand the appeal of the modability difference between tabletop games and computer games are:

      1. cars - it's like the difference between having an older car that you can easily work on yourself, change out parts, fix etc. versus we're having a newer car that might be fancier but also limits the ways you can interact with it.

      2. cooking - it's like the difference between cooking yourself and eating at a restaurant. The restaurant meal might be fancier and less work, but it also limits the ways you can customize it. Cooking is fun when you try new things / experiment and see what happens. And it might be hard to find a restaurant that serves the particular food you want to eat, in the same way it might be hard to find a PC game that models the conflict that you're interested in gaming (although that's not an issue of modability, that’s a matter of variety).

  3. The visual/tactile/temporal experience. The physical presence of the pieces on the board and slower process of working through the events in the game can add to the experience.

    1. “There is something inherently dramatic about holding the die above the table and knowing I need a 5 or 6 to take Paris. Computerized wargames -- and computer-based versions of board games -- suck a lot of the drama out of the situation. B-17 Queen of the Skies was great at building dramatic tension during solitaire play, by making you roll on a series of charts. Bad things happen on one chart, which leads you to another; then you get another bad roll which puts you onto another chart... It would be really simple to write a program that just presents you with the final results, but you would not get the tension building that you get from manually rolling dice and looking things up.” (Source)

    2. When playing Risk, there's a big difference between having two players roll off face-to-face with two big armies, one roll at a time, versus what it's like when playing on a computer, where the whole battle can be resolved in a fraction of a second and one player may not even be paying attention.

    3. It’s common to hear people say that after spending all day working on a computer, they don’t want to look at a computer screen while playing a game to relax.

      1. “I spend too much time staring at a screen as it is.” (Source)

    4. It may be easier to be able to see everything at once.

      1. When you play a tabletop game with Vassal, there may not be a way to reorient the map to display nicely on a big TV screen, so you may be left using the mouse to drag the screen around, which may not be as nice of a user experience as having the whole map on a table in front of you.

  4. The social experience / table talk. Being physically present with your opponent does seem to add to the experience (depending on the circumstances).

    1. See the note above about this being possible with Vassal modules.

Disadvantages

  1. Refereeing/accounting. You don’t have the computer guiding you through the sequence of play / ensuring you’re following the rules / rolling the dice / keeping track of the state of the game, which means:

    1. it can take a lot, lot longer to play, especially if you’re not familiar with the rules

      1. setting up the game takes a lot longer.

        1. Wise Guy History says a larger game can take four hours to set up, versus 15 seconds in Vassal. (source)

      2. It can take much longer to get an answer to a question like what the rule is for a particular thing or to look up a particular chart. Most “living manuals” are searchable PDFs and thus let you easily search for references to a particular concept, and Vassal usually has any charts you need listed in a helpful list form that you can click on to immediately be brought to that chart.

        1. Wise Guy History talks about how exhausting it can be to spend a lot of time looking up charts and looking up rules over and over again for every little step. (source)

    2. if you bump the table, a cat jumps on the table, etc. you can lose the state of the game. Taking a photo at the end of every turn can help but when there are stacks of units your photos won’t tell you what’s under the top counter in the stack.

    3. it can be harder / almost impossible to “undo” your decisions (like how you can on rally-the-troops.com)

  2. Remote/Async. You can’t easily play remotely / asynchronously.

  3. Space. The games take up a lot of space, are harder to travel with, etc.

  4. Fog of war. You can’t easily hide the pieces of your opponent, which means that often you’ll unrealistically be able to see a lot of information about your opponent.

My ideas for board/wargames

A version of Risk that introduces mechanics used in more-complicated games and encourages customizing the game

  • The idea would be to ship the game as a double-sided board, one side of the map would be the normal Risk board, the other side would be a hex-based version of the world map. The game would also a thick booklet introducing lots of mechanics that can be included/introduced. Maybe include paper maps?

    • Mechanics to consider including:

      • using counters instead of miniatures

        • the game should include blank counters and a pencil so you can make your own units / terrain / etc.

      • using CRTs

      • chit-draw to do impulses

      • terrain modifiers / variable terrain (e.g. terrain counters that get randomly placed)

      • allowing/forcing the defender to retreat

      • ‘disrupted’ units

      • handling supply

      • separated movement/attack phases

      • using auctions to decide rules or bid for territories

      • relationship tracks to use for bots or to limit how you can interact with other players (e.g. you must have a relationship score less than X to attack them)

      • CDG-style card play to place units / make attacks / have other effects, a la Twilight Struggle

      • simultaneous writing of orders (a la Diplomacy and War Room)

      • bridge-style bidding to account for uneven starting positions

      • random starting positions determined via die rolling like in Chess960

The equivalent of a wargame for women

  • I’ve been interested in wargames for years, and I’ve been repeatedly struck by how little wargames interest women, and as a natural consqeuence I’ve often wondered what the closest analog to a traditional wargame would be for women (i.e. “I wonder what the equivalent of this would be for women that they would find as interesting as I find wargames”), and at the moment I feel like it would be something like Crusader Kings, a game where men/women are trying to maneuver themselves or their daughters/sons into social circles where they can marry up or get profitable jobs. It would be a game about manipulating people and managing your reputation to be able to continue to get away with your manipulations. Their opponents are other people competing to place their daughters/sons in those same positions. So they need to do things like gossip/lie to out-maneuver their opponents, and find out what people think about other people to gauge the effectiveness that certain moves (like directed gossip) would have. The resources that they’re investing is their time and the time of their sons/daughters, used to cozy up to certain people to make moves like gossip / asking for favors more likely to succeed. The scarce resources they’re fighting over could include the time of certain key/influential people, like the person they’re trying to marry their son/daughter to, or that person’s parents, or someone close to their parents, etc. It could be a brutal game, like you could spread a lie that someone was doing something illegal and thereby get them imprisoned/executed. You could try to poison people. You could hire thugs to try to cripple opponents, like with Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. The game could have secret objectives for each player so you don’t know exactly what the other person is after.

  • You could have different levels of asking people to do things: the least-risky way would be to hint at it without explicitly asking for it, the most-risky way would be to demand it explicitly.

  • Players and their ‘families’ (the equivalent of the forces under their command in a wargame) could have different attributes that affect the strategy they should pursue, like their attractiveness, occupation, current wealth, etc.

  • A problem with this idea for a game is that people would probably be reluctant to risk their real-world reputation to play the game well, this is also an issue in Risk where people are reluctant to employ effective tactics that would hurt their real-world reputation. So maybe design the game so that there’s no need to use dishonesty with other players, it’s just about calculating what the best move for the character is, given their goals and personal attributes, much like in a traditional hex-and-counter wargame with no hidden information.

  • ‘Churchill’ by Mark Herman seems like it may be somewhat similar in spirit to this concept.

A hex-and-counter wargame that just uses ‘rock', ‘paper’, and ‘scissors’ units

  • The idea here is to ease people into the idea of Hex Encounter: War Games by using the familiar concept of rock, paper, scissors and making it clear how positioning becomes very important.

  • I think the tricky thing is going to be figuring out how the positioning of units will affect combat and whether stacking is allowed.

  • You might want to roll dice to determine the outcome of combats and have a CRT.

Learning aids for hex-and-counter wargames

Visual aids to understand what the hexes and counters represent

  • I feel like one of the hardest things for new players who are unfamiliar with war games to get past is not being able to visualize what the hexes and counters actually would look like in real life. The games should have graphics showing what a different type of terrain would look like in a larger view. So like each page in the supplement could have the small terrain hex in a corner and then a large image across the entire page showing that hex blown up with an artist's depiction of what a typical hex like that would look like, showing things like buildings and roads and trees depicted to-scale (because the building/tree/road art you see in hex-and-counter wargames is typically not to scale, I imagine). It would be good if the hex depictions also included an example of what a deployment by various formations might look like on a hex of that size. So you could show on various hexes what a company deployment might look like on that hex, or what it might look like if you had nine steps of units stacked on that hex, and everything in between.

Gradually-increasing-in-size scenarios to ease into the game

  • I think all of these war games should be following the example of Take Command, Second Manassas, where you start at the lowest level (just a single unit if possible) with a few scenarios at that level and then you can graduate to the next level up in the chain of command and take some scenarios at that level of command before graduating to the next level of command.

  • In my opinion, it would be a very good idea to have these scenarios actually teaching you the overall plan of the highest level commander while you're moving up the ranks. So like if you're just commanding a single battalion, which is a single counter, you might get an objective to attack a unit in a certain city hex or hold a position to defend against an attack from a certain hex, and it might not be clear to you why you're doing that at the time, but then as you go to the next level up in the chain of command you understand that that is part of a goal to capture a certain area or to prevent enemy units from passing through a certain area, and then as you go to the next level up in the chain of command you understand why that unit is being assigned to capture that area or prevent enemy units from passing through that area.

How to pronounce the names of things

  • ChatGPT / Google Translate can help with this but it should be in a supplement IMO.

How to read the formations

  • It's frustrating when I'm looking at a hex and I don't understand how to read the formation it's a part of. ChatGPT helps but it should be in a supplement IMO.

Randomizer systems for hex-and-counter wargames

  • I'm studying how to play Holland 44, but after watching playthroughs and reading about it in the forums, I end up learning a lot about the opening theory. And I think it might make it hard to play with other people if I know more than them about what the best opening moves are. So it would be nice to have some way to randomize what the objectives are, what my units are, etc. to make the game more enjoyable and more about the underlying mechanics and combat system rather than the particular setup of this game.

 

Prominent gamers / designers

Demis Hassabis

Volko Ruhnke

2014.01.10 - Washington Post Magazine - In the world of war games, Volko Ruhnke has become a hero

YouTube review playlists

19XX / ‘Forty-X’ / ZOC-bond series by Mark Simonitch

Learning the system

  1. I’ve seen people recommend starting with Salerno ‘43 because it’s a smaller scenario, although others recommended The Caucasus Campaign, Normandy '44, or France '40. (source)

  2. My understanding is the best way to learn games is to just go through the examples of play or start a game and get practice going through the sequence of play.

How I’m learning the system

  • I think I'm going to start by learning Holland 44 because the scenario seems more interesting to me than Salerno 43, then I’ll move onto Salerno 43 since it’s small.

General reviews of the system/games

  • “My one gripe is most of these games that I've played (Holland/ Salerno/ Africa/ Normandy) really come down to battling at a bottleneck point. Here in Africa that is Tobruk. I get a little tired and frustrated when I've attacked the same hex 4 or 5 times with little effect, or my efforts are repaired etc. It seems like most of the 19xx games have this in them, where the game comes to a crawl trying to break-through a single hex or 2 and the game revolves around whether that is successful or not.” (source)

    • Someone replies saying France ‘40 doesn’t have this issue.

    • I responded: Is it unrealistic? Off the top of my head it would seem to me to be realistic, the goal of the defender should be to force the attacker to a bottleneck. Or are you saying it may be realistic but it's just less interesting? Also, from studying Holland '44, I would say that the interesting part can be the maneuver required to successfully block as many enemy forces as possible from reaching that bottleneck while getting as many of your own forces to it as possible.

  • In their review of Normandy '44 Alexander and Grant praise how different the games in the series are from each other.

General advice for the system

  • “In Mark Simonitch designs with ZOC Bonds you are better off not deploying a full line on defense. Utilize ZOC bonds with max stacking and then form a secondary line with interlocking ZOC Bonds. This prevents you from get surrounded and pocketed on defense.Filling every hex and doing so weakly enables the attacker to maximize their attacks. I will attack into the weak hex and break the line and therefore break any zoc bond potential. Another strategy I employ is to not deploy into a crucial hex but instead place the hex between two strong stacks. That way the attacker isn't attacking into the crucial hex itself.” (source)

  • “The Simonitch system seems to reward aggressive play. The key is building a few powerful stacks and attacking with those, rather than a broad front approach. That counts for the player who is primarily on the defensive too. A big stack can disrupt an enemy one, which takes it out for the next round. Its a tricky balancing act between forming large stacks, but keeping enough units spread out to form ZOC bonds to hold the main line.” (source)

Comparisons to other systems

John Tiller’s Panzer Campaigns

  • …

North Africa '41

Reviews

  • Review | North Africa '41 | GMT Games | The Players' Aid

    • This game is significantly different from other games in the 19XX series because of the added layer of supply. Managing trucks (MSUs) / supply is a big part of the game, to the point where Alexander calls the game a trucking simulator. Alexander says he really liked it.

    • The CRT is a lot more kind to the attacker than in other hex-and-counter wargames.

    • Grant says an important aspect of the game--and one that he liked--is knowing when to basically skip your turn if you’re low on supply, which lets you collect an additional supply point. They both say that a lot of other games are just go-go-go, with no lulls.

    • They said the mounted maps were not great, they recommend using paper maps (presumably under plexiglass).

Stalingrad '42

Reviews

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JKe7QRrzbE

    • They open by saying the game is a simulation, by which they seem to mean that the odds are stacked heavily against the Soviets and it’s going to feel like they’re just getting crushed, constantly retreating. As the Soviets you just need to keep your eye out for the rare counter-attack opportunity.

    • Alex says he loves the 19XX system because it feels classic/traditional and it’s not complex.

    • They talk about how the ZOC bond system allows you to have much fewer counters on the map.

    • They say the CRT has lots of DR (Defender Retreats) results, which fits the historical situation.

    • They talk about how doing follow-up attacks is a good way to go after and further-weaken units that have already been disrupted by an initial attack.

    • They talk about how Alex was avoiding 1-to-1 odds attacks, which they suspect may have cost him territory needed to meet the scenario’s win conditions. He didn’t want to make the historical mistake of wasting his troops.

    • Alex says that after turn 8 you can use Determined Defense as the Soviets, which can be useful when you want to keep your lines intact or not give up a victory hex.

    • Grant says (25:30) that one thing he doesn't like about the system is some of the terrain effects. For example, there's a penalty for attacking across a river, but if you're able to get just one unit across the river and do a combined attack, then the units that are still across the river seem to no longer suffer a penalty. Alex says he suspects the reason for it is that it would slow the game down too much if it wasn't the case. But Grant responds that the rivers are a major defensive advantage for the Soviets and the game should reflect that. Someone in the comments says that the attackers are halved if they attack across a major river, it's merely that the defender is not doubled if at least one attacker is across the river.

    • Grant says (28:14) that he finds it interesting how some of the terrain is extremely defensible for the Soviets, for example, Rostov. So it's complicated for the Germans to try to get them out of there.

    • Grant says it's interesting as the defender that you can fortify positions and so you need to try to anticipate where the Germans are going to attack.

    • Grant said that he found the decision of when to use desperate defense to be an interesting one to consider.

    • They both emphasize that the system is not too complicated and you should not be intimidated by it. Grant talks about how he felt intimidated before they were going to play Holland 44, but he just read the rulebook and watched some videos and played some example turns and found it very easy to get into.

Salerno '43

Reviews

  • This seems to be widely regarded as one of the best entry-points for newcomers to the series because it’s relatively smaller and shorter.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrWEYMK6q-4

    • At 27:00 they say that doing a ‘determined defense’ in this game has more requirements than in other 19XX games they’ve tried.

Normandy '44

Reviews

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQSRln_4NNA

    • They say a nice thing about this game is that its size appeal to both new wargamers and experienced grognards. It could be used as an entry-level heavier wargame.

    • They say that they made a mistake at first by not taking advantage of the ZOC bonds to free up units for other purposes.

    • Alexander says a cool thing about this entry is that you can craft the ZOC bonds, while a game like Salerno is too tight to use ZOC bonds.

    • Alexander says he likes how different parts of the board have totally different dynamics based on the terrain, airdrop success, etc.

    • Alexander says a big part of the game is figuring out how to get column shifts in your favor by using naval guns, artillery, air support, etc. And on the German side it’s figuring out when to do a Determined Defense and when to just retreat; later on they say it’s rarely worth it, it’s only worth it when in conditions where you get DRMs in your favor like in cities, but most of the battles are outside the cities. Also, the Germans get severely punished when attacking in Clear weather because of enemy air support.

    • They say that in The Dark Summer the beach landings are pointless, in this game they’re less pointless but there’s still no way the Germans are going to be driving the Allies back into the ocean.

  • I remember seeing a review of The Dark Summer--I think it was by Wise Guy History on YouTube--where the guy said he liked how The Dark Summer played a lot faster than Normandy '44.

Holland '44

Reviews

  • If you are playing against an Allied player who knows how to optimize the opening turns' attacks, the German has little chance of winning. If the Allied player is less experienced then it will be more 50/50. My last game against a very experienced Allied player, Nijmegan fell turn 5, the Island was cleared by turn 6 (combination of 82nd attacking from Nijmegan and 1st Airborne coming out of the Arnhem bridgehead) and even though I had managed to destroy every bridge over the canal near Veghel, the 30Corps got to Nijmegan turn 7. I conceded at that point as 30Corps was going to enter Arnhem turn 8 and I could not get close to the road in time to cut the supply. I had battered the Allied airborne, killing 2 82nd units and remnants 5 other 101st and 1st Airborne but it wasn't enough to get to the road. (source)

How I’m learning the game

  1. I’m starting by watching the following videos:

    1. Player’s Aid videos:

      1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMSeHQMOomU&pp=ygUXcGxheWVyJ3MgYWlkIGhvbGxhbmQgNDQ%3D

      2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AJCxC0fFJY&pp=ygUXcGxheWVyJ3MgYWlkIGhvbGxhbmQgNDQ%3D

      3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lklZ-fuL5tY&t=18s&pp=ygUXcGxheWVyJ3MgYWlkIGhvbGxhbmQgNDQ%3D

    2. Harsh Rules playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmb6jhoKkSA&list=PLU4KFypUKBFPQ9OO-57-l7JAsY5AnetKW

    3. Wise Guy History playthroughs:

      1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHIvGzhBee0

        • He says this game feels more closely tied to the historical narrative than Ardennes '44.

        • He likes the setup sheets that come with the game.

        • He says his landing rolls were pretty average, but he had a lot of blown bridges at Nijmegen. He also got unlucky by having an unknown unit in Arnhem turn out to be a strong German unit. He got lucky in Eindhoven that the three unknown markers were all zero strength units. So basically, 30 corp was advancing nicely, but the airborne units were having a lot of trouble securing their bridge objectives. He says he made a mistake by not moving earlier on Nijmegen because you don't want the Germans to be able to fill out those city hexes because it's very difficult terrain to attack into. He seems to use the two flanks of the attack up the highway to form a perimeter for the central formation to advance down while keeping the German forces back.

        • He says he makes a major mistake by not forming a perimeter around the one railroad crossing to Nijmegen that he had been able to secure and some German units that appear to the east are able to advance into a hex adjacent to the southern railroad bridge hex and extend their ZOC into it, preventing fast advances across it. It costs him 9 hexes' worth of movement along the highway.

        • At the end he’s still stuck at Nijmegen and he says he wishes he had attacked it with more force earlier to get it clear.

      2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0c3HVSHwks

        • He says that by the time he gets to the end of the rulebook, he's forgotten a lot of what he’s read already. I noticed the same thing when reading the rulebook for Target for Today. I think the way to get around this issue is to focus on one part of the rulebook and create many scenarios for yourself where you only use that small part of the rulebook, like only the part for moving. And then you can gradually have other scenarios where you incorporate other parts of the rulebook into the movement rules. So you could have a scenario that's movement rules plus bridge building.

        • 4:00 - He gives an example of a rule that he didn’t notice, where on the first turn only, if you roll a result for landing that the airborne units are scattered, it only affects one unit in the stack. But this rule was not mentioned in the section on first-turn-only rules. It was only in the section on airborne landings.

        • He says there's a lot of chrome and a lot of exceptions.

        • He spends the rest of the video going through the different peculiarities of the game and talking about the considerations he's thinking about while formulating a plan.

      3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG45x3qYukw

        1. Wow, he says Holland 44 is his least favorite of the series. The complete opposite of Alexander and Grant’s opinion.

        2. He says there are a lot of special rules around airborne units (landings, replacements), traffic markers, turn-specific rules, bridge restrictions.

        3. 4:00 - He says that the reason he found the game frustrating to play last time was that the Allies got poor rolls on their landings and the Germans got good rolls when blowing the bridges and so the Allies really had no chance, through no fault of their own.

    4. The Oaken Knight playthrough:

      1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od8A6LIHV5U&list=PLBqEo_hpR1W4aZ0OPT41TWqwsK1ztzWTN&index=1

  2. I’m then going to open the game in Vassal and just try to move some counters around to get familiar with Vassal and the rules.

    1. Key controls in Vassal:

      1. Double-click a counter in a stack to expand the stack so you can select one or more of the counters in the stack. Double-click it again to collapse the stack.

      2. Use Alt-Click or Command-Click to individually select multiple counters in a stack.

      3. opt+C/D/F/T for the different player’s aid pages.

      4. Ctrl+F to flip a counter

    2. Movement:

      1. Move a single unit in a loop around the map.

        • Then do the same for other unit types.

      2. Move between entry areas.

      3. Move units through each other’s ZOCs in different terrain.

    3. Attacks

      1. Conduct a simple attack between two units.

  3. I can try creating some smaller scenarios a la Take Command: 2nd Manassas.

    1. Create fictional scenarios that have few units and limited rules, and maybe even have a separate rules PDF or document just for the rules necessary to play that smaller scenario, a la the ASL Starter Kit.

    2. Create scenarios for each of the individual areas where the action is happening. Do it like in Take Command: 2nd Manassas, where you do it by formation. So start with commanding single battalions (single counters), then brigades, then divisions, etc.

      1. Battalion-level scenarios:

        1. General thoughts

          1. Have a scenario where all you're doing is moving and checking supply. I think a recon unit would be good for this scenario. Actually, since the movement rules are different for different unit types, it might be good to have a few different scenarios with a few different unit types with different movement rules. And show movement across different terrain types.

          2. Have scenarios where you're moving, attacking, and checking supply. I think an airborne unit would be good for this.

        2. Scenarios

          1. Get to Elden

            1. As 1st Battalion, 2nd Parachute Brigade, 1st Airborne Division, your mission is to hold the crossroads at Elden to prevent the Germans from being able to reinforce Nijmegen via the Arnhem bridge should Arnhem contain too

          2. Attack at Grave

            1. Airborne units at 4715 and 4818 attack the hidden unit at Grave. 1 turn.

      2. Regiment-level scenarios:

      3. Brigade-level scenarios:

      4. Division-level scenarios:

        1. North of the Waal

          1. Prevent Axis reinforcements from reinforcing Nijmegen from the north.

  4. Formulating a plan for the campaign game:

    1. While playing Unity of Command I personally find it most helpful to work my way backwards from the objectives. So, like, when I read the victory conditions, it seems to me that the key condition is the ability to trace a supply path that crosses the Lower Rhine. So you've got seven bridges or ferries that could be used for the overland portion of the supply path. And so then you just kind of need to accept that the situation could change on the fly and you want to remain flexible to adapt the supply path that you're going to be using to get those victory points. The Nijmegen Bridges seem to be the most crucial single point of failure because there's no other way to get that supply path across the Waal during its Road Portion, you can't use a Ferry during the Road Portion. But you could send 30 Corps infantry north across the Waal at the ferry points, completely ignoring Nijmegen to 1) secure the Supply Path along those roads north of the Waal and 2) get them across the Lower Rhine. And then I just figure out how far my infantry can move each turn, and I try to construct a schedule of where they need to be at minimum in order to get where they need to go to reach their sub-objectives on time.

    2. Regarding the airborne units at Grave: The major goal to aim for is to be able to trace a supply route to north of the Lower Rhine. So you want to assign your larger formations missions that will ensure that you can maintain control of that supply route. The bridges at Nijmegen are the only path that the Land Portion of the supply route can take across the Waal River. So, Nijmegen is a crucial, inescapable sub-objective and worth investing a significant portion of your Garden force to take. And yes, to get to those Nijmegen bridges your supply route needs to cross the bridges at the Waal Canal or the railroad bridge across the Maas. But here's the thing: the unknown German units are not able to move, so there's only that one German unit in Nijmegen that could take up a position on the other side of the bridges across the Waal Canal and blow them, and it's unlikely that the Germans would move that unit out of Nijmegen as that is the more-crucial terrain. So if your airborne units north of the Lower Rhine are successful at preventing the Germans from advancing south across the Arnhem Bridge to reinforce Nijmegen, and your airborne units at Groesbeek are successful at preventing German units from reinforcing Nijmegen from the east and south, then your 30 Corps advance should be able to dominate the single German unit that's free to move around east of the Waal canal. So by a process of elimination, it seems to make the most sense that the primary mission of the airborne units dropped east of Grave should be to prevent any Axis reinforcements from reaching Nijmegen from the west. The only circumstance I can think of where you would want to move them east to the Waal Canal is if the German units coming from off-map southeast of Gennep are going to be strong enough to bypass your Groesbeek units defending against that approach. So you're gonna want to keep some airborne units close enough to the Waal canal to be able to reposition if it's starting to look like the units coming from the south are going to be more of a threat than the units coming from the west. I feel like the most conservative positioning then is to have one unit in the woods at 4918, and two units in Wijchen, so that one can move up to Weurt if necessary to block that western approach. A more aggressive approach would be to send all of your airborne units at Grave at first to ensure you take it, then reposition to the conservative positions to be able to more-quickly reposition depending on where the Germans are the biggest threat (e.g. Germans attacking via Grave vs. via Mook). I feel like the German player wants to coordinate their advances so that they hit the airborne forces from all directions at the same time.

    3. I feel like the recon units might be good for quickly identifying what those hidden German units are so that you can adapt your plan accordingly.

Thoughts

  • I feel like the opening moves are probably much easier to memorize than in a game like chess. It would be interesting to develop some process for randomizing the starting position such that you couldn't easily memorize the proper actions to take. I think especially at the Garden force’s starting positions where you don't have the randomness of the drops of the airborne units.

How to play well

  • Air units

    • I feel like these are maybe most useful for follow-on attacks, where it’s harder to build up a favoritable odds ratio as you’re further from your front line.

  • Garden force

    • In general:

      • Maybe what you want to do is try to get the defenders disrupted and then they get halved the next time you attack them. So try to attack them while they're disrupted to knock off a step.

    • Turn 1:

      • Support:

        • Orders:

          • Air support: 1501, 1603

          • Artillery: (Gds Div: 1303), (5 AGRA: 1304)

      • 12 Corps (left)

        • Orders:

          • Move:

          • Attack:

            • 1401 and 1402 attack into 1501 supported by air support and artillery (5 AGRA, 1304). 3-to-1 odds.

        • Thoughts:

          • re: hex 1501 - 3-to-1 is the best odds you can get. Infantry need to start next to a canal to cross it in their movement phase, so you can only attack with the two hexes of infantry at the canal. And infantry attacking across the canal have their attack values halved. If they all attack the left hex of enemy infantry, that makes their combat power 10 ((4*5)/2). When all of the attacks are across a canal, the enemy infantry will be doubled. So that'll make a one-to-one attack (10-10). You can use air support to get a CRT shift to increase that to two to one. You can also use artillery support to get another CRT shift to 3 to 1.

          • 9DLI and 1H should be moved up to the canal to be able to cross next turn.

      • 30 Corps (center)

        • Orders:

          • Move:

            • 1404 1CG moves to 1504.

          • Attack:

            • 1503 attacks 1603 supported by air support. 4-to-1 odds.

            • 1504 attacks 1605 supported by artillery (Gds Div, 1303). 7-to-1 odds.

        • Thoughts:

          • Your tanks can't enter the polder to help your infantry attack the enemy infantry, so they're forced to just go straight down the highway.

          • You can't just mass all of your units in the forward most hex and shatter the enemy because the stacking limit says that in an over stacked hex only two units plus one free stacking unit may attack out of the hex.

          • If you attack with a 9 strength tank unit and 2 8 strength tank units, that gives you 25 combat power, which gives you a 5 to 1 against the first unit. You get an armor shift (6-to-1) and you can get another shift with an air attack/artillery to get to 7 to 1, the best odds ratio on the CRT, which gives you a 50% chance of causing a DS result, which causes a step loss and puts the unit in full retreat.

          • The Gds Divisional artillery can only be used with that formation, so it should be used for either an attack on Kerutt, Penal, or Stephan.

          • If you can attack Penal and advance into his position, you can prevent the frontline German infantry opposite 12 Corps from retreating along that road because of your zone of control.

          • The best attack I can see you getting on the SS atç 1406 is 4 to 1 odds if you use both air support and artillery and the unit at 1306.

      • 8 Corps (right)

        • Orders:

          • Move: None

          • Attack: None

        • It feels like your infantry are too weak to attack across the canal, so they are best used to threaten to cross the canal if the enemy infantry pulls back away from the canal. So the idea is to use them to pin the enemy infantry while waiting for more forces to come up.

BCS - Battalion Combat Series

Reviews

Positive

  • I was armoured reconnaissance most of my professional career. No other game I’ve ever played gave my trade what was due. Until BCS. Look at what a recon unit can do in bcs as opposed to most any other game. It’s dynamic, it can do several jobs. Dividends. (source)

  • One thing I will say about BCS is that, on this site at least, it has had enthusiastic endorsement from professional soldiers. (source)

Negative

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/hexandcounter/comments/6m4gvc/comment/djz1t8x/

    • The game is too fiddly, there is too much information to track, the map is quickly cluttered with all kinds of information markers. In addition, the rules are not as clear as they could be and some questions are left unanswered and\or the answers are ambiguous. Also, there are some issues with the design itself that just don't sit well with me (especially the randomness of the insanely important second activation roll and this system's concept of step-losses).

    • there are some pros: an innovative command and formation system; simple combat; SNAFU rolls and a lot of nice small details (traffic, explicit need to stay in Command Radius etc.) which help to really tell a story. But these merits are buried under the issues I described above.

COIN series

The British Way

How to play well

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbF4dZZxY4c

    • As the British, your job is to react to the insurgents.

    • You pretty much never want to do a limited op if you’re first eligible.

    • The “sabotage” action is one of the major ways that the insurgents are going to accrue victory points (subtract from political will).

    • The “propagandize” action didn’t come up much in their game at all.

    • You’re going to go through ~16-18 cards total.

  • There is a strategy guide in the rulebook that gives general advice for how to play well:

    • General advice:

      • “you should begin each campaign with a plan for what you want to achieve, and only divert from it if there is something more important you need to respond to”

      • “in the long-term the Propaganda Round effects are likely to have a greater impact [on political will / who wins], and you should make sure that you are always working towards achieving these.”

      • “you can use a Limited Operation on one turn to set yourself up for a powerful action on the next”

    • MCP (insurgent) advice:

      • “it is important to expand early and often into areas that [the British] are seeking to control. Rally is ideal for this, but don’t be afraid to use March to re-enter otherwise inaccessible areas if necessary, especially if they are only protected by a New Village.”

      • “make sure to [March into Economic Centers and place Sabotage] at every opportunity you get”

      • “make sure to secure your own income, with a Base in Thailand being virtually untouchable and worth 4 Resources over the whole game if placed down early.”

      • “Once Active your Guerrillas are easily removed by the British, especially outside of Mountains”

    • British advice:

Columbia block wargames

Julius Caesar

How to play well

  1. Pay attention to the road movement limits, because they make it so you can’t just mass like 8 blocks in one city and then move them all together to attack at once.

  2. Pay close attention to the garrison limits of each town/city so you don't get units disbanded during the winter turn.

  3. Most of the additional units you can recruit require that you control certain towns that you don’t start out controlling, so you want to be thinking about capturing those towns so that you can recruit those units.

‘Dark’ series by Ted Raicer

The Dark Valley

The Dark Sands

Reviews

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QH5lecJoqc

    • They say to not be intimidated by the large map because the game is only 20 pages of rules and it's really not that complicated. They say it’s easy to learn.

    • Supply is really brutal in this game because if you're out of supply at the end of a round, the unit is eliminated rather than just reduced.

    • Grant said that while playing as the Allies, his strategy was to try to hook around the Axis and cut them off from their supply.

    • When you attack units that are out of supply, you get additional benefits.

    • They said they liked how the game split the map up into three areas to avoid areas where nothing really happens. They said it was a very clean design.

    • They can’t think of anything they didn’t like about the game.

    • They praise how much additional information is on the map with all of the other tracks and boxes and guides.

    • In his explanation of the game, Alex says that resolving combat is very simple, and the complexity and interesting part of the game is in trying to plan around the different chits you will have access to.

    • Alex says that he likes how much freedom to maneuver there seems to be.

The Dark Summer

Diplomacy

Misc. Thoughts:

  • In casual games it seems important to keep your eye out for players who are likely to remain in alliances for longer than they should. The same thing happens a lot in casual games of Risk.

Questions to Answer:

  • What is the smallest functional game that you can make? In other words, if I wanted to have as few players as possible and as few territories as possible, but I also wanted to not violate any of the original rules, how many territories / players would I have?


Analysis of Simple Situations:

2-player games

2-square game:
If each player starts with one square and there are only 2 squares, the game will be a stalemate. [Is there any way to generalize this observation?]

3-square game
If the winning condition is to get 2 squares, this game should be a stalemate with perfect play (the pieces should bounce every time they try to move into the middle territory). However, with an imperfect opponent one player could win by convincing the other player to not

Misc Links
The Diplomatic Pouch Zine
PlayDiplomacy.com Forum Discussion - Diplomacy Game, Scoring and Game Theory
LessWrong.com - Diplomacy as a Game Theory Laboratory
David Rosen - Diplomacy and International Relations Theory (Part 1)
David Rosen - Diplomacy and Game Theory (Part 2)
Wikipedia - Edi Birsan (apparently one of the best Diplomacy players)

How to best learn / play / enjoy the game

How to run the game

  • In-person, in one sitting:

    • I play it at parties and everyone drinks and smokes. It gets people moving about and it is really fun (source)

    • have some other games ready for eliminated players to play while the main game of Diplomacy continues. (source)

  • In-person, one turn per day:

    • It's how I got into Diplomacy, actually. Someone at my school ran the game, collected orders every day, and printed out the new map the next day. We'd often be sitting in the back of economics class (the class most of us shared) passing notes back and forth negotiating. (source)

    • We play it at work running 1 turn a day. (source)

  • Try to determine if the players are going to be able to take the game seriously and not be influenced by their real relationships:

    • It's not just the backstabbing. (…) it's like, what about when Gary allies with his wife and neighbor for the entire game without diplomacizing with anybody else, then agree to a 3-way draw, completely defeating the point of the game? Or what about when there's an obvious 2-person alliance which controls 49% of the board, but Gary refuses to defend against them out of spite? Or what about when Gary just decides to let Peter write all of his orders, because he knows he can't win and just wants the game to end? Or what about when Gary deliberately eliminates a player's wife, since he knows her husband is her ride home so he'll be killing two birds with one stone when the husband is pressured to leave early? (source)

Avoiding hurt feelings

  • The one piece of advice that was really helpful was to call each other by country they represent instead of first name. This way, looking back at the game one would say, “and then Germany just xyz’ed and blah blah” so you don’t get hung up on the friend’s betrayal but focus on what happened in the game. Definitely 10/10 planning another day to play it soon. Diplomacy is now by far my favourite game. (source)

Giving basic strategy tips

  • people think it is some cerebral chess game but really it is a confusing street brawl. (source)

  • the best players in Diplomacy rarely outright lie. A lot of new players think you have to lie at every opportunity; the more experienced players know that if you have to use it, you save an outright lie (or even a half-truth) for the major stab that puts you in a winning position. So it also depends on not only outright betrayal but how your friends feel about half truths. (source)

Go

How to learn / teach Go

How I’m learning Go

  1. If you’re trying to get someone else interested who is likely to be reluctant, I would recommend that you consider starting by playing Reversi, because I feel like it’s easier to visualize the immediate effect of your actions in that game, and it has basically the same goal (hold more territory than your opponent).

  2. I’m playing through “The Conquest of Go” on Steam.

    1. I do a single Tutorial in the Learning Center every day, and quickly review the previous day’s tutorial to remind myself of it (I’ll also review other previous tutorial if I don’t remember what they said).

    2. I’m playing my first Campaign with settings like the following:

      • Board Size Distribution: I did 13 9x9 boards, 5 13x13 boards, and 1 19x19 board.

      • Difficulty Preset: Casual (slider all the way to the left to make it as easy as possible)

    3. I started just doing a single 9x9 game per day.

    4. Then I discovered the ‘Fortification’ (Go puzzles) feature and started doing some of those in addition to a game every day.

    5. My idea is that once I conquer all the 9x9 territories I’ll go for the 13x13 territories.

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