Virtual Wargamer Discussion Board/Boardgaming/Era: Gunpowder (Amer. Civil War) Andy Libera - 10:37pm Oct 21, 1996 EST (#49 of 55) WARNING WILL ROBINSON! WARNING! Long post on the Command magazine game Hoorah following. Played a solitaire Hoorah this weekend. I had fun playing it, but have some very mixed thoughts about the design. Just to be different from Glen, I’ll talk about my cons first. While the chit pull system is good for making the game more random, and may be good for reflecting indecisiveness on some of the commanders, it also generates some pretty silly looking game turns. Units locked in a death struggle will sit and stare at each other, ignoring exposed flanks or wide open spaces. Units will not only act inconsistently, but contradictory without reason. In my game, the gunboats entered on turn one and were the first chit drawn! And then proceeded to sit in place until turn 8 or 9. Now if they had been in such a hurry to get there, I don’t think they would have just docked off of the Confederate line without doing SOMETHING for an extended period of time. Also, the end turn chit may be just too random. I had back to back turns where the End Turn chit came out 4th and 3rd, and the union had the only moves. I now think that maybe there should be some minimum number of chit pulls before you put the end game turn into the mix (maybe 5 or 6). It could still make for bad runs of luck, but would probably cut down on the extremes. The victory conditions are very gamey. There doesn’t seem to be anything magical about holding on to the bridges at the particular point in time the game ends. So the rebels only hold one or two brides at the end of turn 12, so what. At the end of game turn 15 (or 16, or whatever) they would hold them all. I like to understand the why of what I’m trying to accomplish in the game, but that doesn’t seem to exist here. There has to be a reason to hold the bridges AT THAT TIME. I can think of one, namely, that the Army of the Mississippi might also be arriving from Vicksburg, but that only leads to my next point... The union army is just too brittle, and, as I’ve noted in a previous post, this especially does not make any sense for the Army of the Tennessee. I had too many clear open terrain attacks at 2/1 or 1/1 where powerful looking union troops got the dreaded DrL1 and just disappeared! Or even worse, when a counterattack was necessary, rolling a high odds exchange and having to lose two complete units to a middle of the road rebel two-stepper. Also, most of the forts/batteries are pure chrome, especially the forts. I think as a two player game, this would be very hard on the Union player. When your best chance of winning is rooting for early "End Game Turn" chit draws, it does something to sap interest. On the plus side, the game is very good solitaire. The chit pull system really does disengage your brain from "rooting too much" for one side or the other as you can’t fall into a rhythm of thinking you’re playing one side. You very much watch the battle unfold. The in turn mechanics are clean and the basic system is interesting. The erratic combat results table adds a certain spice and element of uncertainty which is good and does stop "factor counting" to some extent. I think this combat results table is much superior to the random column shift feature that was built into Wahoo! The stacking restrictions are a very good touch for this period and I think realistically present the problem of getting a unit from the back to the front of the line--ya gotta figure some way around those units in front of you. I think it would be very interesting for XTR to use this system for a historical battle. In fact I like the system so much, I can’t help but wondering if the game couldn’t be "fixed" for two players. Rather than just a pleasant solitaire game, I believe there is a good two player game lurking in there somewhere. I would think the following would help the game: 1 - Stronger Union units. All Army of Tennessee infantry are two steppers. Army of the Potomac units of 5 or stronger (or stronger than 5, I really haven’t figured that our yet) are two steppers. This allows the scope to attack and makes the entry of the Army of the Tennessee a feared event, but due to the chit pulls it will still be hard to get a coordinated attack going. 2 - Don’t put the End Game Turn chit in until 5 chits are pulled. More chit pulls help the Confederate and would balance the effect of the stronger union units. Given the urgency with which this battle should be conducted, it is unlikely that forces would stare at each other indefinitely. 3 - Make the variable reinforcements more likely as the game goes along such as rolling the turn number or less. The arrival of those forces should not be so haphazard and, besides, the BEF counters are pretty neat to look at. 4 - You might have to consider adding a turn or two to the game because the Confederate’s job will be that much harder. OK everyone, you can wake up again. Sorry to have gone on like this, but it seems like there is a really good game "just" missing here.