Wargames and associated misc

I recently said I'd recommend the "commander" series of games so it seems like as good a time as any to explain why. To do so I'll have a natter about the one I know the best and have played the most - Blitzkrieg commander! Presentation  7 Ok, honestly, bit ugly. The cover is quite bland despite having lots of Shermans, a Tiger and a Hurricane on it as the whole thing is overall a blue/green (or possibly a green/blue) and so everything slightly blends together. But as we all know - "never judge a book by it's cover" (otherwise a lot of 40k would be highly rated). Inside has a lot of text which makes it look a little imposing compared to some games but I have to say the "a lot of text" is due to the "a lot of content". Even though half the book (approximately) is tables that's because it covers every nation on every front for the entirety of WW2 with them so really it's an acceptable trade off. Playability  9 For all that the g...

I'm within 12 inches of the game and armed with a virtual keyboard so I can rapid fire this review. It is going to be written  entirely from memory but I played a lot with many factions against many players over a few years thanks to GW fostering a great community by way of veteran's evenings (every Tuesday and Thursday for the over 16s if memory serves).  Perhaps one day I'll get my copy out and reconsider what I'm about to write. Or not. I'm easy either way and just writing to amuse myself. Presentation  7 I'll go with a 7. It's got some good to great art in there and the layout doesn't make the rules hard to learn. Playability  5 It's... fine. It has a few clunky parts but it works. Mechanics  4 The core rules are fine, that's why playability scores a 5. It's possibly the game to popularise standards like 6 inch moves, the "roll to hit, roll to wound, roll saves" sequence (I really like the AP mechanic too, it'd be nice to se...

Having covered my favourite game in Chain of command and it's twin brother who was dropped a lot, Bolt action where to go next? How about "the only place not corrupted by capitalism; spaaaace!" Rogue stars is one of the earlier Osprey "Blue border" books (officially titled the Osprey wargames series), a range I understand to be designed to be cheap and self contained. I own most of these books and I think almost all of them have been worth the gamble but this one in particular is a favorite in the series, no small feat when the series contains the various "Rampant" games and Gaslands. "But why?" I hear you cry! Well; Presentation  6 The Ospreys have a fairly uniform look so they'll generally all land around the same mark but Rogue stars has some artwork that appeals to me and the model pictures throughout are all painted by Kev Dallimore so are a high quality. The rules are explained well enough but sections are arranged in such a way tha...

 Now this is a strange one. I don't know even roughly what I'll score this! In my last post I went over Chain of command and all the things that contribute to it being my favourite game. Bolt action seems like a good sequel as it's a very similar game. At least in concept. Both are set in world war 2 at around a platoon size game with some additional support units available so using CoC as a reference point to compare and contrast we'll see if we can sort out what the key differences are.  It's worth noting I haven't played as much Bolt action as, well, lots of other games so this is hardly going to be THE definitive review but in my subjective, personal view it will be the best one ever written in the entire history of today. Presentation  9 No arguing here the Bolt action books look really nice and come in sturdy hardbacks and glossy softbacks. They're wargaming's coffee table books which is unsurprising as they're published by Osprey and written b...

 I said I was going to review/score my favourite game next so let's make good on that and score Chain of Command from Too fat lardies; *this is a second attempt at this as it turns out writing is hard. However as someone who is taking more pride in what they write than the average modern Marvel writer I'm going to rewrite* Presentation  8 Pretty good. The cover is meh, grey on grey with a picture of half a soldier in feldgrau. Not so much a visually arresting cover as a "visually let off with a warning" cover. The layout and phrasing of the contents is clear and concise as well as efficiently written which is very handy for looking up things mid game. And it has an index! That's worth a point by itself. Unfortunately it's slightly flawed so not worth 2 points. For example try looking up what smoke does. (I'll give you a hint - it's in the section on "who can shoot"). There's been a fairly consistent area of confusion for new players in th...

 I am generally quite averse to score based reviews as I feel they miss out on all the nuance of a full review. This is for the very good reason that they, in fact, do miss out on all the nuance of a full review. Add to this the strange skewing of a lot of scales (that I have seen) where 6 or even 7 is considered the average and you end up with something that is as close to worthless as you'll find without watching a Disney+ original. A number is a cold, objective full stop where the truth could be a warm, subjective semicolon so greater depth is required in my humble, but very correct, opinion. However where score based reviews do have a use is in the quick scan, instant gratification category. Something to take in in a second and mentally bookmark for later investigation or noted as something to ignore. Yes, I'm aware noting it to ignore it is technically not ignoring it but what can I say? Life is complex. For some of us from a writing point of view they can also have the ad...