From: John Best <cfjbb@EIU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Siege of Constantinople

Eric Pass started off the Worst Game Thread:
>> Quite a while ago, there was a thread in the rec.games.board newsgroup
>> about 'Worst Games' which revealed many interesting perceptions.
>>
>> Among them was this one.  Is Siege of Constantinople (S&T#66)
>> really this badly off or was Mr. Stevens exaggerating?  I have
>> always heard positive things about this game.
>>
And Jim Byrne commented on SoC:
>The original design had an extensive naval subsystem that was summarily
>cut from the final draft.  Optional rules to add the naval suystem back
>in were published subsequently in Moves along with the counter images
>required.  Apparently it was a case of procrustean development.
>
>There were considerable reverberations from its appearence in S&T as I
>recall. Apparently, if you added the naval system back in, and
>rationalized the errata then there was a decent game in there
>somewhere.  I am not sure but it is possible that the whole thing was
>re-developed with the naval game and released as a boxed item.  There is
>just something about this title that is nagging me at the edge of my
>memeory.

First, a small trivia question:  What was the title of R. Berg's article in
Moves in which the naval rules and counter images were provided?  (I'll buy
the winner a donut, if and when we ever meet).  Second, I think Jim is right
about the naval rules being cut "right at the end" to space space, or keep
the game less complex, or whatever. It would be mildly interesting to see if
His Bergness ever used any ideas or concepts from the naval portion of the
game in any of his other work (I'm wondering specifically about Chicken of
the Sea--set much earlier in time than SoC, I know, but basically about
oar-driven war vessels right?).  Berg acknowledged the controversy about the
game, but defended it in his column in Moves (that was F.O. as I recall).
Third, there are a lot of reasons to slam SoC (choice of color scheme for
the counters was "dramatic"), but, heck, I liked it.  I never played it
against anyone, but as a solitaire experience it was cool because each
army's mission was so one-dimensional (The Turks didn't have to think about
defense, and the Greeks/(Christians?) didn't have to worry about offense),
when you put them both together you had kind of a yin-and-yang effect.  In
other words, what I'm saying is, that playing either side by itself may have
been kind of dull, but the whole was more than the sum of its parts, imo.
Gary R. has been talking about "flavor" or "color" and the effects of this
variable in games, and I think that SoC had lots of that.  The individual
Christian leader counters certainly conveyed to me the idea of a particular
guy, with his particular characteristics in command of a relatively small
bunch of diverse soldier waiting on the walls, with some anxiety about the
inevitable assault to come. And then didn't the Christians (I keep writing
that because I don't know what the besieged garrison was called in the game)
have an engineer counter who could repair the walls?  When I solitaired it,
I think I remember having the Turks try to go gunning for him specifically.
And then on the other side, you have your Janissairies just waiting for the
artillery to do its job so they can go "over the top" and complete the
assault.  Until I wrote that, I had never realized SoC's WWI flavor.

        Now, after talking about what the game had going for it, the big
question is, well, do I like it so much that I'll get it out and play it
again?  The answer: Unlikely.  Just too many new games that look way better.
Thanks for reading.

John Best
cfjbb@eiu.edu