Playing With Your Unit(s)

How do you move your unit? I am not talking dirty here, what I am talking about is activating one of your units in an army you control. There are thousands of games out there and all, well almost all of them share one simple feature, they all move chits, mini's, pawns, or pieces around a game board or a hobby table. What is your favorite method to move your pieces?

Chess
On one hand you have Chess, in Chess your turn revolves around moving one piece, or in gaming terms, activating one piece who already has a movement and an attack stat. When I was a kid I really liked Chess, I really liked trying to set up my movements ahead of time to try to take down my opponent even though I rarely won any games. Nowaday's I cannot stand to play the game, I think that there are way better games out there to play. Even though I don't play the game I still like the "activate one piece at a time" mechanic as it lends itself to a strategic game of trying to outmaneuver your opponent. In Chess you don't move every piece of your army, but what if you did. How fun would that be?

Conflict of Heroes
The Conflict of Heroes games can be easily compared to Chess as what your trying to do is outmaneuver your opponent for strategic positioning to obtain a particular objective. Well, after writing all those words, which I am greatly impressed I thought of, it can be stated that the only thing that Chess has in common with the Conflict of Heroes games IS that you only activate, or move one piece at a time. Chess does not have Activation Points, CAPs, or big ass chits that are easy to grab and maneuver around a game board, Conflict of Heroes does. I have not found a better way to activate your units, the COH system is brilliant.

Warhammer/Warmachine
If you compare the systems in Conflict of Heroes to other systems you will see some vast differences especially when you compare them to miniature rule sets. Have you ever looked at a Warhammer Fantasy rulebook? You better know your stuff if you haven't. Have you looked at Warmachine? In both of these miniature systems you activate your entire army and then your opponent does the same. In both of these games it is common to have 15-20 minute turns because of this unit activation and the compexity of the rule set. Do you want to play games like this? Not everyone does, but I do, I love the "move your entire army" aspect of war gaming. The excitement I get from moving my entire army thrills me, I move, he moves, I move, he moves. What could be better? The only thing wrong with it is realism. How realistic is it in war for a general to move one portion of his army then wait to see what his counterpart does? Not really, not on this scale. It depends what your into playing, it depends what kind of mood your in.

Battlelore/Memoir 44
Some games take the approach where they meet these two strategies in the middle and only let you activate a certain number of units before passing your turn to the next person. Battlelore and Memoir 44 share these systems. They both use a card driven mechanic that lets you activate different amounts of units each turn depending on what you draw. This is a fun and fast acting system but tends to lend a little more to luck, which I am not a huge fan of in my board games. I understand the need for some luck but I favor tough decisions over luck anyday. Regardless, the systems for activating units in these games works well and tends to make for fun gameplay.

Overview
All in all each one of these systems works well in their own respect. One question that I have though, when is somebody going to make a game where they incorporate all three? That would be the game I want to play. For now though, try playing Battlelore by moving all of your units on your turn, or try playin Warmachine by moving just one unit then passing the turn to your friend, let me know how they work...