Paul Aceto - May 4, 2012 7:32 pm (54733.) new "Em, in baseball, it may seem like nothing is happening, but you must always pay attention." Jon Miller to his young daughter, who was almost hit by a foul ball. OoTW: The War in France & Flanders Out of the Wrapper is an old, odd game called The War in France & Flanders, by Command & General Staff Games. I came upon it while scrolling through a list of board games on sale at Troll and Toad for 50% off. I was surprised to see a wargame featuring 1,000+ die-cut counters from a company I had never even heard of. There is no entry for it on Boardgamegeek, and only a few (negative) mentions here on CSW. I can't find the designer (Mark Dumdel) anywhere on CSW or BGG. The game was listed for $24.99, so I decided to take a chance. It arrived two days ago. The game comes in a large zip-lock bag with a sticker announcing the game as “The War in France & Flander's War” (sic). The counters are what I’d call old-school GDW: crudely-cut but serviceable, with a plain design but at times tiny font. The map runs from the North Sea to the Med and uses a set of offset-squares to make a “square hex” pattern. APL uses the same system in its GWAS and SWWAS games. So far so good, until you get to the rules. They are a mess. It quickly becomes apparent that this was meant to be part of a larger system covering all of WWII. The rules start off discussing areas and mechanics that don’t apply to France 1940 (e.g., the supply capabilities of Corfu). They are not well structured, and have frequent paragraphs entitled “Experimental Rule.” To top it all off, some basic actions related to things such as movement and combat are very fiddly, filled with chrome and fractions. Some games you play, some games you try to conquer. The latter sit defiantly on your shelves, as if to ask: “are you up to playing me?” There is an odd appeal to them, one that makes you want to say, “This Saturday, goddamit, I’m going to put that thing on the table for six hours and bludgeon my way through a few turns.” NOVA’s Hammer of Thor is probably the best example in my collection of this type of game. Red Sash's Lace War series (I've got Turkenkrieg) also come to mind. Now they can share that honor with War in France & Flanders. Will I ever actually punch the counters and play it? Probably not, just as I haven’t done so for Hammer of Thor or Turkenkrieg. But will I take it down from the shelf now and then, reread the rules and toy with the notion of actually trying to wrestle with it? Yep. Was it worth the $24.99 I paid? Probably yes. As a gamer and collector, I like to have a copy of something that has been seemingly forgotten for over 30 years, from a now-defunct company and that put out only one game. If any of this appeals to you, know that Troll and Toad still has 97 copies. I might wait until the price drops though, as I would not be surprised to see them going for $12.99 or less in a few months.