From: cesar@sun14.vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (Cesar Providenti) Subject: Re: Worst Game In article , John Caraher wrote: > >Tito was pretty bad, but I thought Kaiser's Battle was even worse (among >the S&T games from that era). I played it once, solitaire, and the Brits >are little more than speed bumps. I remember it had a wierd combat system >where you multiplied the combat strengths by the die roll, then checked a >CRT for a result (or something like that). It all looked nice, seemed >innovative, but proved so totally one-sided as to fail completely as a game >(though I suppose it may have been a decent simulation...). Funny you should say that the British units are little more than speed bumps: I won't argue that the game is one-sided, but I find the British rarely lose! To even hope of winning, the German player needs a one-sided die (all sixes), especially for the opening barrages and attacks. To win, the Germans have to exit units off the western edge of the mapboard. Naturally, most German units begin the game at the extreme eastern edge of the mapboard. If I remember correctly, there are about 12 turns in the game, meaning a significant number of German units have to cross about one- tenth of the mapboard per turn. There are two forms of movement in the _Kaiser's Last Battle_. Units can enter a zone of control only by moving at their normal rate; units moving at triple their normal movement rate cannot enter a zone of control. The initial, weak British battalions can avoid being pulverized by retreating to one hex beyond the nearest German unit's normal movement range. Doing so while keeping a continuous line of ZOCs limits the Germans (who are also required by the victory conditions to mop up stragglers in the trenches) to a small advance - roughly one-tenth of the mapboard - each turn. Eventually, the British have to stop retreating, but by the time they reach the westernmost river line, they will have received enough reinforcements to stop the Germans cold. I don't remember the combat rules too well, but I believe even a 3-to-1 superiority in combat strength gives only a one-half probability of winning the attack. (Flip that coin!) The movement rules make it easier for the British to shift units to threatened points of their line (since they don't need to enter a ZOC) than for the Germans to mass the units necessary to successfully attack a weak spot. To make things even worse for the Germans, the further they advance, the more out-of-supply they become. The headquarters needed to trace supply lines cannot move at triple rate. I've seen the Germans win only once. It happened when the British player didn't retreat a weak unit far enough (!) halfway through the game. Advancing stosstruppen surrounded several strong front-line British regiments. These, in turn, were forced to attack the Germans, and their subsequent absence left the entire British line vulnerable. Maybe I don't have enough opponents, and we're missing some tactic or strategy that could help the Germans win. Or perhaps I've missed some errata: I bought the game 2nd-hand only a few years ago. (E.g., maybe German stosstruppen *can* enter ZOCs while travelling at triple the normal rate.) Or maybe Douglas Haig worked for SPI. As for other bad games: I've always suspected _Tito_ was bad. I've never been to a wargame store that didn't have at least one, slightly used copy of _Tito_ for sale. Another odd game was SPI's _Turning Point_ (the battle of Stalingrad using the France 1940 system). It usually boils down to one or two die rolls: either the Germans are trapped, or they aren't. According to the supply rules (or lack thereof), von Paulus & co. would still be eating horseflesh if the Russians hadn't attacked. In the same system, the Russians in _Moscow Campaign_ receive so many reinforcements that the Germans can't kill them quickly enough to leave their start lines. (No October '41 pockets here.) Who needs Zhukov? Oh, well. Cesar Providenti (cesar@sun18.vlsi.uwaterloo.ca) VLSI Research Group, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada ---------------------------------------------------------------------- That [H. G. Wells's] conception [in _The World Set Free_] was apocalyptic should come as no surprise; an awareness of the potential for apocalypse is the basis for the only sanity we know. --- _Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons and Aggression_, Robert L. O'Connell