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...

What We Need Is...

A chit based medieval tactical war game. Look around, these types of games are far and few between. We need knights, castles, sieges, and everything else that is shown on The Tudors or Pillars of the Earth. I think I have an idea and it revolves around some of the ideas that are currently out there on the market, most noticeably the Conflict of Heroes and Space Hulk unit activation systems. These days it seems that every other game is based on a conflict that happened in one of the major wars over the last few centuries, maybe we can come up with something different, something to teach history from another time period, maybe a different perspective. Stay tuned in the future for an announcement.

What game am I talking about?

The buildings are crumbling around me, garbage is swirling around the streets as it seems like every time I take a breath my lungs get filled with the dust coming from the broken buildings . I have been sitting in the same spot for 20 minutes and then I see what I am looking for. The top of a helmet pops up over a piece of the crumbled wreck about 100 yards away, the helmet rises up and up, until I finally see the skin of my victim. I gently pull the trigger and my bullet races to the finish line in my opponents face. It seemed like slow motion, the blood splattered out the back of his head as it exploded upon the wall behind him. As I though about the kill I saw another helmet running from next to the dead man, I couldn't reload in time to hit him but I saw where he ventured to. I knew where he was, he did not know where I was. I picked up my radio and gave them the co-ordinates and in 3 minutes time shells rained down on the building where the opponent ran to.

The Sci Fi Crappy Movie of the Week- Mega Python vs. Gatoroid

Wow, last night my family and I watched the Mega Python vs. Gatoroid staring old school singers Debby Gibson and Tiffany. This Sci-Fi channel thriller is about two rival women and chronicles them on their mission to save/destroy the everglades. To be honest I didn't even know that the OK looking blonde in the movie was Deborah Gibson, as she is now known, but to be quite honest, after watching her act she should have probably kept to singing. Here counterpart, which I also did not know is Tiffany, plays a chunky red head with huge cans who tries to save the everglades by feeding alligators steroids through Cornish hens. Sounds great huh, not really but it was a little entertaining as the kids really got into it.

February Game of the Month- Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel! Kursk 1943

If anyone out there is looking for a good war game series with simple to follow rules which gently ease you into the game then check out the Conflict of Heroes series. The game pays homage to the war game of old but does so with style as in implements an action system where you use points to activate each unit on the board. Because of this brilliant system the game plays relatively simple as all the stats for each unit is on the over-sized chits. Storms of Steel is the second game in the series and shipped in 2009. There are more expansions on the way, all of which cover the many different theaters of World War II.

I have picked this game as my game of the month for February. What this means is that I am going to play this game for the entire month as much as I can. I am going to teach this game to my buddies and to my son not only to justify my purchase but to have a blast with what I like to do, play games. Stay tuned for my session reports.