So last fall, Bruce suggested we pool a list of games we wanted to play again and then work our way through them. There are about 20 games on the list with the sequence being randomly generated.
First up was Struggle for Europe, a reskinning of Lincoln (which I don't think we've played) by Worthington Games. This game focuses on WW2 in Europe and offers one of the best games at this scale that I have played. There are relatively few counters, only 30-some areas, with point-to-point movement and the game uses cards to drive play. There are three decks (representing the three phases of the war), the game ends when one player has exhausted all of their cards (which creates major opportunity costs plus creates a tactical "attrition" option for players), and you win by controlling key locations.
The strategy for the Germans is to either win early or try to hold on and preclude an allied victory before the cards runs out. I think this is the third time we've played this and every game is a nail biter. This one ended up in a German victory just as the US was invading France (some luck in the desert and at Leningrad tipped it--otherwise, Germany was spent).
Next up was Sam Mustafa's Longstreet. Other than the Union won, I don't recall much of the details of this ACW skirmish. This is another card-driven game at the brigade level. A few years ago, we played through the full campaign system (which sees the cards and armies change over the course of the war). This is a good game to be the defender in!
Then we played Sam Mustafa's Nimitz. We've done a couple of WW2 games of this but Bruce had bought some pre-Dreadnaught minis so we refought a break-out action in the Philippines between the US and German fleets (I think). Overall, this is a pretty solid game. Sometimes the amount of effort to resolve shooting seemed tedious but, if that were streamlined, there wouldn't be much left.
We then played the same scenario using the 1980s rules Fire When Ready on a hex grid. It was a messier game (no formations required) with preplotting and (I think) simultaneous movement. Not a bad game. Nimitz feels more modern in terms of gaming conventions and mechanics, though. I think the scenarios split one win for each side.
We continued with the naval theme using Mustafa's Halsey rules (basically a map game) of a British convoy run through the Mediterranean during WW2. This is a very solid game and was, I thought, much more interesting than Nimitz in terms of the decisions (I tend to prefer high-level games, I think).
Once the fleets come to grips, the game has a small battle board mechanic. In the end, the Germans won on points (I could not roll worth crap that night). Overall, pretty fun and the use of blinds created enough fog of war on a shared board to make decisions tough.
We wrapped up the autumn gaming with Taskforce, a cold-war naval game with double blind movement set in North Atlantic. We played duelling convoy runs with surface and submarines (no fixed wing air to simplify the rules a bit). The author is better known for the Victory Games 6th/7th/2nd Fleet series that came out about 10 years later.
There is a bit of fiddly searching (such is double blind without an umpire) but that got easier after a couple of turns. Once there is contact, you switch to a battle board to resolve air, missile, torpedo and gunnery attacks, which is kind of cool. I don't recall who won (it was close).
There were some interesting battles: a Soviet convoy getting stalked and repeatedly attacked by NATO frigates using guns (having used their SSMs to take out the escorts) and a NATO convoy being stalked and repeatedly attack by Soviet subs and surface ships. This created quite a lot of tension.
For a 45-year-old game, this was surprisingly good and the multi-step battle board gave an interesting feel. Your SSMs, for example, come in, face area AA, then jamming, then close AA, then they strike (or not...). You can decide how many missile from each volley drop at pickets and how many continue into the main fleet (which means being subjected to a second set of defences).
