Scott DiBerardino - Jun 24, 2009 11:31 pm (#29456 Total: 29490) Designer of TENKA, not so new anymore from Victory Point Games :: Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. -- Napoleon ON THE TABLE at JR's : GUELPHS & GHIBELLINES GUELPHS & GHIBELLINES: The Battle of Campaldino 1289 Bill T and I put the new Europa Simulazioni release through its paces this evening. I had read the rules and was able to get Bill up and running within 20 minutes. He took the Ghibellines, who start outnumbered maybe 2:1 (including reserves), but do have terrain to anchor their flanks, and get two free activations at the start to do some damage before the counterattack begins. And damage he did, disrupting several units in my front line and driving a wedge right down the middle. Limited counterattacks mostly just ground down both sides more. My few archers and crossbowmen (in the Compagnias Rossa and Bianca) were by and large ineffective, scoring a couple hits here and there before getting scattered to the winds. One of my battaglia under Vieri was hit hardest, but managed to stay on the field, even when reduced to a 1 or 2 cohesion rating. I was eventually able to get Dorfurt's cavalry moving which struck the disordered attacking Ghibelline cavalry (his infantry remained out of the fight). Many blows were traded, but the Ghibellines failed their disruption tests a few times and this quickly tilted victory in Guelph favor. Once my victory level got to around 7, we finally (!) had a failed Continuum roll and Donato's reserves crammed into an opening in the Ghibelline flank. This prompted Navaro (sp? - the Ghibelline reserve) to flee the field, bringing them to the brink of despair. It was over the next turn. Bil and I found the game very fast moving, quick to learn and calculate all the modifiers, and only moderately fussy with the cohesion hit markers (large units and even larger hexes help very much here). For me, this hit the sweet spot between GREAT BATTLES OF HISTORY and MEN OF IRON. While it has the "cohesion hit" system of the former, it is a bit cleaner, and the command system is less gamey than the latter. The Victory Level mechanic seems new to me, and gives a nice uncertainty as to how much further the game has to go. Seems to model medieval combat well in that it is hard to disengage and regroup your battered troops once they are in the thick of it, and while things can hang in the balance for a while, eventually it tips and falls apart for one side or the other. I look forward to the other scenarios in the box, and possibly other boxes...? Altogether it was two and a half hours, set up to breakdown. William Terdoslavich - Jun 25, 2009 10:20 am (#29460 Total: 29490) BookmarkEmail to Friend I'm in print again--seven contributing chapters in "It Looked Good On Paper, another three in "Haunting Museums". The other side of Campaldino... OK, so I am new to Guelphs and Ghibbelines and I never heard of this battle (my command of medieval history is not memorable). First impression: I see the two opposing forces lined up in three ranks. OK, that's how it was done. Mounted knights make up the first two lines of both armies. Similarities end here. My forces are outnumbered two to one. The enemy line has one flank resting on the river, the other rests on a wooded hillside. From the first line, echeloned outward from both flanks, are archers. I was tempted to let the enemy come to me, but I was deployed in open ground, so he would have maneuvering room to develop an outflank attack. Under the rules of the game, I had the first two activations. With only seven units of knights in two lines, the plan became apparent--charge directly into the kill sack, take flanking fire from the archers, and hope there is enough knighthood left to fight and kill its way through three lines of troops. So it was "Charge!" My line crashes into his line and starts killing its way through. One unit takes hits from flanking fire, but for the most part, archers are marginal. The knights begin killing their way through Guelph horse, killing more than being killed. But the victory level/victory point track is not working in my favor. I have to kill eight steps before I go up one level, Scott only has to kill four. So he's lapping me on the track. No matter how brittle I made his first-line horse, few to none break. I mauled his second line. Same story. My seven units of knights get whittled down to four. He's throwing infantry into the battle to hold the line (desperate!). But the reserves are tripped and fresh units begin crashing into my depleted right. I can't bring my infantry up fast enough. With Scot's Victory level hitting 12, it was game over. But the loss curve was telling. I had to kill at a rate of 2-1 and suffer no failures of morale check. Instead, I was hacking through at 3-2 and suffering disastrous morale rolls. The game played quickly, which is refreshing. I usually view pre-gunpowder battle games through the PRESTAGs prism. That system allowed you to "fab" any battle from its counter mix, but let's be real, you could only do so much graphically in the 1970s. G&G's pieces are sweet little works of art--men at arms and knights with the same shield markings, color-coded units that give you position and command-and-control information at a glance. We really needed a pair of tweezers to handle marker traffic. But there is no unit stacking, the hexes are large, and things can be handled well enough with your fingers. I'd certainly play this game again.