From: "Johnny Lee Wilson" Well, I just finished my first game of GBoH: The Devil's Horsemen. I have to say that it's been a while since I played a game at this complexity level and it's actually been a while since I played a game by Berg and Herman. I had mixed feelings about the game, but I also feel like it is worthy of note. The maps are certainly minimalist in a way that would have Philip Glass applauding (probably clapping with one hand, knowing Glass' work). On the other. I haven't seen so many blank spaces since SPI's pre-stage series. One the other hand, CLEAR TERRAIN has distinct advantages in a game where hordes of Mongol cavalry are tearing up the battlefield. Of course, one advantage of a minimalist map is that gorgeous colored counters look really great on the map. We played the Leignitz scenario and all those colorful Silesian knights, Hospitallers and Templars looked great wedged between the blue Polish counters and the fearsome Teutonic Knights in ritual black. If you want to play the Mongols, though, you'll have to settle for various shades of beige and brown. AND, some of the color of the battlefield goes away when you start putting all of the different bookkeeping markers on the tops of the stacks to represent cohesion hits, routs, disorders, and rallies. The rules desperately need an index. Now, this might not have been as much of a problem if you'd played Cataphract or any of the other GBoH games of recent vintage. However, it was a pain for me. I've gotten spoiled by other GMT games with detailed Tables of Contents and/or indices. Does it really make sense to have to intuitively go to the Rally phase section of the rules (Section 11) to discover what to do with those Disordered counters that you have to place at the end of Shock Combat (Section 9, I think)? Also, in my opinion, the system is counter-heavy. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for having lots and lots of counters, but I would rather that they were counters for interesting units and interesting mechanics. I didn't feel like a lot of the counter mix did either of these positive things. But there IS good news. As with any Berg and/or Herman design, there is gold in them thar thrills. The ability to activate lesser/slower leaders through a trump mechanic (and have it counteracted by the opponent's trumping the trump mechanic) is sensational. Normally, you would be locked into a specific initiative order. In Devil's Horsemen, however, you get a chance to move it up in the order by rolling against the leader's initiative. It's VERY interesting. If you fail your roll, you go with the usual leader. If you succeed, it really changes the turn. Also, for you Herman fans in particular, there are charts galore. Resolving combat isn't a matter of adding numbers together and crunching them into 2:1 or 3:1 odds before consulting the CRT Table. Instead, you check Shock Superiority of Units to determine if the CRT Table itself is going to be modified. If it is AS (Attacker Superiority) say a Cataphract Heavy Cavalry against Light Infantry, the defender's cohesion hits on the CRT are doubled. If it is DS (Defender Superiority), the attacker's cohesion hits on the CRT (in shock combat, BOTH attacker and defender take losses) are tripled. THEN, you check the unit type versus unit type against a frontal attack, flank attack or rear attack matrix and this tells you which column on the CRT to use (higher being better). Finally, you look at numerical superiority and shift the column one way or another to increase or decrease your odds and roll the die. Though there is only one CRT table, it serves random needs by using these other formulae. One confusing factor, however, was the use of the die. When determining TQ (Troop Quality--a more inclusive consideration of what other games often call Morale) with a TQ Check die roll, a 0 appears to fail because you need your TQ number (or your TQ number minus the number of cohesion hits) or less to be able to attack. We assume that the 0 must be a failure because the possibility of failure would be too slim on certain elite units and the possibility of failure would be IMPOSSIBLE on a crossbow that hits in the next hex on a 9 or less. YET, the CRT places the 0 at the low end of the spectrum. I like the 3rd Edition D&D convention that rolling high is ALWAYS good. If 0 is sometimes good and sometimes bad, that's confusing. Actually, I guess 0 is always bad, they just expressed it differently on the chart than would be implied by the other rules. As speculative history, this is a fascinating game. The scenario we played is a rout. Nearly EVERY Mongol unit is an archer as well as cavalry unit. This means that you get combined arms in the same unit. Meanwhile, the eastern-Europeans have NO archers unless you accept a variant. Apparently, the few players who have won with the Eastern-Euro side used the archers. Frankly, I played the Poles and I did not change history. I was slaughtered by the Mongols after an interesting game. BUT, I could never surmount the disadvantage of not having archers. Of course, next time we play, I'll take the archer option and we'll even use the Wenceslas option. Yes, in typical Berg fashion, the scenarios have multiple options to let you play "What if?" and redress the poor play balance of some of the actual historical situations. I am delighted that I have found a friend with whom to play this game. Of course, he is the general manager of a logistics firm specializing in air freight. He is used to dealing with details and was not overwhelmed by the complexity of the game. As the Mongols, he had a great time. I'm too lazy to create a cyberboard game box for this game, but if one becomes available, I would be delighted to challenge all comers. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/IMSolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~->