Category Archives: Board Games

Games played on a board usually with cardboard pieces.

Board Games, Wargames

Soldier King

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Frank Chadwick continues his exploration of the then relatively unique point to point mapboard first used in A House Divided. Here, it takes the form of a multi-player game untethered to history with 4 asymmetric kingdoms competing for control of an island.

The counters as with many GDW games are thin, glossy, and serviceable with the usual simple palette of blue, red, green, and yellow. Little information is presented beyond symbols for infantry and light or heavy cavalry and a title indicating levy, veteran, or guard.

The overall situation coupled with the simplicity of the playing pieces makes this a nice choice for a campaign for musket era figures. Chadwick’s followup miniatures game for the Civil War follows a similar approach. The Civil War expansion for his Volley & Bayonet rules offer details on transferring the bard game battles to miniatures.

Board Games

Red Star White Star

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Tactical Game 3 had an impact that reverberated for years. SPI and Avalon Hill batted the concept around for years. Here is an early entertaining but flawed iteration from the early 70s as the system is applied to then contemporary warfare in western Europe. The game would ultimately be replaced by the ambitious Mech War 77.

As suits a game of this sort where scenarios are ahistorical, the game relies heavily on contemporary military documents and organizational layouts. Scenarios explicitly list on-paper elements as well as idealized conflict situations meant to illustrate doctrine.

The game is a remarkable change from the series games up to this point. Most noticeably, the board is large, with few hills, divided into a number of sections. Infantry and artillery include their vehicular component in a single counter. Ranges for HE weapons can be as large as 72 hexes. Helicopters can move swiftly across the board with relative immunity. TOW offer enormous AP attacks that can guarantee destruction of armored units.

There are also odd rules. TOW units disappear after firing. Units may also triple their fire for single turn then disappear as well. There were a bunch of other complaints addressed in a sheet of errata including the unpardonable sin of missing a counter for a scenario. One complaint was that the Russian forces were modeled on outdated and incorrect data that left the Russians far too weak.

The game of course hints at changes to come. Soon, SPI would introduce their SiMove system while covering a range of WWII theaters. The final iteration of the system would be October War designed by Mark Herman who would go on to rewrite the system as Mech War 2.

Board Games

Panzer Leader

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Following the success of Panzerblitz, Avalon Hill produced Panzer Leader, a similar design for tactical combat in Western Europe. The game included 4 modular boards, one showing a beach, and counters showing tanks, infantry, artillery, and aircraft counters for British, American, and German forces.

Scenarios start with a paratroopers holding a vital intersection on D-day and follows with beach landings, attempted breakouts, etc. in chronological progression. The game seemed a bit smoother in design than Panzerblitz but Panzerblitz had the benefit of being there first.

SPI in the meantime was taking the design in a different direction and introduced a similar magazine game, Combat Command with significant changes in scale and a promise of a continually evolving system.

Board Games

Star Trek Combat Simulator

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Anyone who has seen Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan will remember the simulation room and the Kobayashi Maru scenario. FASA had at one point gotten license to produce Star Trek gaming material and this board game was their answer to tactical space combat offering a simpler, easier to approach game than the more popular Star Fleet Battles from Task Force Games.

They also offered a range of ships derived from Star Trek Ship Recognition Manual which offered some unique designs that different from SFB and not necessarily appearing in any other Star Trek material. The offerings included Federation, Klingon, and Romulan ships as well as some others including the Kobayashi Maru for the completist.

The rules provide an introductory game, an intermediate game, and an advanced game designed for use within an RPG play thru where each member of the crew can perform in whatever role they are assigned to.

Some of the game pieces provided displayed on the single sheet board.
As with so many naval and space games, there is rather large record ship provided per ship.
Board Games

Dreadnought

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SPI continued their exploration of tactical games with Dreadnought. James Dunnigan had earlier created the massive cardboard miniatures game Jutland for Avalon Hill. Here, capital ships are simplified to basic stats encapsulated on the colorful set of counters with simple silhouettes showing the ship from the air as little more than a black or white outline. The game covers naval warfare from 1906 through WWII and is supposed to include every battleship in action during those times. Cruisers and destroyers are presented more abstractly wherein a single counter represents multiple ships. Like so many of the naval games SPI was releasing at the time, this one uses the SiMove pad where orders are written for each ship prior to the turn.

I bought this game in the late 70s when I was frustrated with the limited range of tactical space combat games available and thought that with a little monkeying around this game could fill that role. I played it a number of times but always as a basic naval game.

There is an interesting campaign game where one is presented with 4 different battle situations and must allocate their ships accordingly. Overall, a pretty fun game with limited stacking for capital ships, none for cruisers and destroyers. A note, too, that submarines and aircraft play no part in the game. Maps are simply identical light blue modules.

Board Games

Mech war 77

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A midway point in SPI’s exploration of tactical games begun with Tac Game 3. The game follows Red Star/White Star, an earlier effort covering roughly the same period. Here, some of the anomalies of the earlier game are cleaned up and new rules are added. The single large board of the earlier game are replaced by more elaborate boards highlighting differences in elevation which were noticeably absent in Red Star/ White Star.

The enthusiasm for tactical armor games is not too surprising in that the conflict in Israel had led to significant advances in armor and many of the folks playing SPI games were people in the military.

Not all theaters get the same emphasis as western Europe. The Middle East and Far East have only a single scenario each. The conflicts in the Middle East would be covered more thoroughly in SPI’s October War and Avalon Hill’s Arab-Israeli Wars.

A note, too, that SPI produced another game down the road covering the same theater but with an entirely different set of rules called Mech War 2 which actually consisted of two separate games, Red Star/White Star covering Western Europe and Suez to Golan covering the Middle East.

One half of the available map used in the game.
Board Games, Rules

Heroquest

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For a brief time, Games Workshop and Milton Bradley collaborated on a couple of games. Heroquest is the most popular. Similar to early D&D, players take the characters of various archetypal fantasy figures and probe a dungeon encountering traps, monsters, and treasure. Plastic accessories and cardboard counters allowed players to decorate the dungeon according to the outline in a book of dungeon maps. Players and monsters were represented by plastic figures in the best Games Workshop tradition. One player served as dungeon master.

There were several supplements for the game both here and in Europe. The game begs for expansion. It should be relatively easy to design new and even more impressive dungeons. A guide was supposed to have been published in Europe outlining this.

A peak inside the box shows the dungeon board, screen, cards, and rules as well as some of the entertaining selection of miniature figures and accessories.
A peak inside the box shows the dungeon board, screen, cards, and rules as well as some of the entertaining selection of miniature figures and accessories.

Currently, there is talk of a reprint although old copies of the game can still be readily found. Some of the supplements are far more difficult to locate.

Board Games

Battletech

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No surprise here, Battletech moves readily between miniatures, boardgames, and computer games. Below are some of the maps produced for use with Battletech. One side of the map focuses on a particular type of terrain, the other is a hexagonal grid on white. Cardboard cutouts were used to display things like office buildings and houses.
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The Mechs of course stood up straight and tall and towered over everything around them. Why not? Every other piece on the board was flat. Nevertheless, the game looked good even with just cardboard. In some ways, the often amateurish scenery that appears in games is not as compelling as the scenery on the attractive boards.

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For those unfamiliar with the game, playing pieces are giant piloted robots packed with weapons. Their Achilles Heel is their susceptibility to heat overload. The robot can fire weapons, take hits, and move but it pays the price by building up heat. Heat and battle damage, weapons systems and their ammunition are tracked on an elaborate chart much like warships in naval wargames.

Board Games

Deluxe Advanced Squad Leader

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Advanced Squad Leader was certainly one of those games that came close to a miniatures game. As the rules blossomed into multiple volumes and were finally consolidated into a huge 3-ring binder, Avalon Hill developed a series of larger game boards for use with miniatures. Below is one of the boards from Hedgerow Hell, one of the two deluxe modules.
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