Matthew Kirschenbaum  - Sep 16, 2008 12:03 am (#24606 Total: 24664)  
"Is it any wonder that the monkey's confused?" --Roger Waters 	 

Army of Ireland

I picked up Army of Ireland as an impulse buy on a recent trip to the
Compleat Strat in NYC. It's one of them small-box Counter Strike games,
designed by one David Cuatt, covering the Battle of Ridgeway in 1866. 

Never heard of that one? Neither had I. Well, it seems that just after
the ACW a bunch of Irish vets calling themselves the Fenians decided it
would be a goodly idea to invade Canada and seize some land, thereby to
force concessions from the British Crown in Ireland. Or something like
that. Anyway, these worthies ran smack dab into a couple of regiments of
Canadian foot somewhere a day's march into Ontario and both sides let
fly. 

Individual unit counters represent companies more or less, thus placing
the game in the same family as the various attempts to do tactical ACW,
the best of which is surely OSG's venerable 20th Maine. Anyway, you've
got a few dozen counters on each side, and a smallish 10 x 17" map to
fight them on. Basic system is chit pull activation with ranged combat.
A chit draw activates the leader and any two units from the leader's
formation. Each activated unit then gets four activation points, which
it can spend on various activities in any order so long as the total of
four is not exceeded. So one unit might edge up slightly and shoot,
another might attempt to rally, another might fire off a more carefully
aimed volley. Units can also charge for the expenditure of all four
action points, provided they pass a morale check. 

There's no defensive fire--that's left to the luck of the chit draw.
Scoring a hit (>8 on 2d6) means a follow up d6 on another table, where
there is a base 50% chance of no effect after all. Units can progress
from Shaken to Broken to Elimination by accumulating hits, but they can
also achieve any one of those results outright from off of the Hit
table. It's all a little arbitrary. 

Some rules for leader effects, rout and rally, and ammo round things
off. There's a smattering of chrome, such as one Canadian unit armed
with repeating Spencer rifles. Victory conditions? Beat up on the other
guy. There are optional rules for placing objective markers on the map,
but those don't make much sense to me. 

The whole thing plays out in a couple of hours. It's not bad. The
Fenians have a one hex advantage at short range, and that can make a big
difference in tactics as the game plays itself out. There are also
slightly fewer Canadians, *and* they are subject to ammo shortages, so
all in all a little tough on the Maple Leafs. Not that much thinking
involved, basically just a high wristage shoot-'em up. For all that, it
can be surprisingly hard to actually eliminate an enemy unit. 

There is some nice artwork on the counters, though it would have helped
to have the leaders better distinguished from the regular guys and the
art for the Charge and Broken markers is, weirdly, basically identical. 

Again, not bad. Not great, but not bad.