Wurzburg Pentomic

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Matt Foster

After nattering on like a raving lunatic about fallout shelters, nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union, in all fairness I now need to provide a look at the game that set the Wayback Machine in motion.

“Wurzburg Pentomic” is one of two games published in Strategy & Tactics magazine issue 263. The other issue game is “Kabul ’79″. The games share the Cold War Battles series rules — but play quite a bit differently due to an extensive array of game-specific special rules.

Of the four games published to date in the Cold War Battles series, Wurzburg Pentomic is the only one based on a hypothetical battle. The basic premise is a Soviet invasion of West Germany some time in the 1950s.

The time period in which the game is set is a central element of the design. Folks old enough to remember SPI’s “Modern Battles” quad games will no doubt recall the original “Wurzburg”, a folio-sized game that covered a hypothetical Soviet-NATO battle in the late 1970s. Wurzburg Pentomic is set about 20-25 years earlier, during the US Army’s period of reorganization along what was then called the “Pentomic” division structure.

Under the Pentomic structure, each US division was organized into five battlegroups. Each battlegroup was theoretically self-supporting, which gave it the ability to operate fairly independently. This allowed the division’s combat elements to disperse more widely in what was expected to be a battlefield environment dominated by the threat of tactical nuclear weapons. The division kept some powerful artillery support under central control, but otherwise the battlegroups were equipped to fight with decentralized command and logistics.

Enough doctrine. On to the game.

Wurzburg Pentomic (“W-P” from here on out) is basically a folio-sized production. The two games in Cold War Battles 2 share a single, standard-sized map sheet. The maps are wedged onto the sheet along with some charts and tables, so neither map is symmetrical. Each game also gets exactly one-half of the standard sheet of half-inch counters.

There are a lot of positives to the game, so I’m going to get the bad news out of the way first. A couple of things in the package definitely aggravate me.

The map arrangement is a head-scratcher. A game-turn track and both CRTs (Mobile and Assault) are printed on the sheet. As a result, the game maps wrap around the gadgetry, leaving game-play areas with oddball sections and geographical enclaves defended by stalwart box borders and lines of type.

I’m a firm believer in leaving charts and tables off of game maps entirely. Maybe a turn track or other tracks/boxes that can be squared off with the map. But wrenching around the playing area to accommodate the CRTs is less than ideal — especially considering that the CRTs will usually be useless (as in “upside down”) for one of the players. Far better to print the tables on a separate sheet and square off the maps to avoid the “thick forest defended by typography” syndrome.

I realize printing CRTs on-map probably saves a page of the rulebook, but the “upside down” problem alone always justifies planning for at least one stand-alone sheet of play aids. Just for a tease, one of the CRTs is reprinted in the rules anyway because the on-map version is screwed up.

The next aggravation is as much a question as it is a complaint: Who ate crayons and puked on the countersheet?

Technicolor Commies and multi-hued Forces of Freedom.

Seriously. There are two sides in this game: Soviets and NATO. But the combat units are printed in about a dozen distinctly different colors. They’re not muted variations of the same basic colors, either. Each ‘command’ (usually a division) gets a nice, bright color all of its own. NATO units are variously drab green, forest green, light blue, dark blue, gray and tan. Soviet units are white on red, black on red, orange, yellow, white and black.

Ugh. It’s not the first time Decision has used a Crayola color scheme on game counters. Sadly, I doubt it will be the last. Are things like ‘formation stripes’ along the counter bottoms or ‘formation colors’ in the unit symbol boxes such advanced graphic concepts? Somebody loan them a Pantone color chart, too. Good heavens.

It’s a double-aggravation because in general this is a pretty good game. The map artwork is fine. But the color scheme for the counters is simply wretched. I mean, really. Orange?

Those production faux pas aside, I found a lot of game-play value in W-P. The ‘series’ rules are an adaptation of the old Modern Battles system. Zones of control are semi-rigid. Once a unit is in a ZOC, it can only leave via combat result or by expending half of its movement allowance to withdraw. Combat against all enemy units that project ZOC into a friendly-occupied hex is mandatory — although artillery barrage and/or air points may be used to ‘soak off’ some mandated attacks.

Combat is based on differential and the attacker usually chooses which of two CRTs to use: Assault (bloody) or Mobile (lots of retreats). Soviet combat strengths — attack strengths especially – are generally higher owing to their preponderence of armor. The designer, Joe Miranda, also notes that Soviet regimental-level artillery assets have been factored into the combat strengths, as those guns were intended to engage in near direct-fire support.

In the orders of battle, the US has more independent artillery units. Particularly useful are the Pentomic artillery battalions, which can split the fire of their ’5′ strength points onto as many as 5 different target hexes. Pentomic artillery is very handy for firing ‘soak off’ barrages so the US player can more effectively concentrate ‘normal’ attacks against his opponent. It’s also worth noting that as the game progresses into the later turns (9 total game turns), the US gains an increasing advantage in the amount of air support it receives.

The two US Pentomic-organized infantry divisions in the game — 3rd ID and 8th ID — gain additional advantages if/when the nuclear weapon optional rules come into play. Their constituent combat units are more resistant to damage from atomic attacks and they have a smaller chance of being affected by some of the game’s nuclear-related random events. The numerous US ‘leg’ infantry battalions can also take advantage of airmobile movement when helicopter transport is available.

Another interesting special rule in play is that units of different commands aren’t allowed to stack together. Elements of the ‘higher command’ formations — V Corps for the US, 8th Guards Army for the Soviets — are the only exceptions.

Each side starts with one or two commands on the map; everything else enters play through random reinforcement dice rolls. The US starts with 3rd Infantry Division and 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment on the map. The Soviets lead off with the 79th Tank Division. The entry of everything else is in the hands of cruel fate.

Because of the random reinforcement mechanism, W-P has a nice degree of replayability built in. Obviously, there’s a huge difference in play between a game where, say, the US 3rd Armored Division enters on Turn 2 and a game where it enters on Turn 6.

Two salvoes straddle, Part Two

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Matt Foster

Back to the grit-and-grind of the Great War.

In my last game-related post, I took a quick look at the mechanism for handling artillery fire in Avalanche Press’ new-ish Infantry Attacks: August 1914. It’s a very rigid system that requires pre-game plotting for every fire ‘module’ for every turn of the game. The design goal is laudable — but the implementation leaves something to be desired.

If nothing else, the physical process of plotting an impact hex for every fire for each turn of the game can be enough to drive a man to strong drink. There are some long scenarios in the package — we’re talking day-long, regimental-size engagements — and artillery is usually plentiful.

When things go off the rails, cancelling a large group of plots certainly conveys some small fraction of the infantry commander’s frustration — but I know lots of gamers who will probably only ‘enjoy’ wasting an hour of pre-game plotting once or twice before they decide to find another game to play.

Jeux Grenier Games’ “In The Trenches” series has been around a bit longer than Infantry Attacks (maybe a year’s head start), and that system’s treatment of artillery tilts in the opposite direction.

In The Trenches: Through Mud and Blood

As I’ve noted previously, In The Trenches is more of a ‘firefight’ scale game than a ‘battle’ game. At 100m per hex and 5 minutes per turn, it slices out bits of larger engagements for players to game. The game focuses on the action after opposing forces have closed to within small arms range, so artillery plays something of a lesser role. Nevertheless, artillery still consumes a decent chunk of the rule book and it still can cause a significant amount of casualties.

In The Trenches, among other things, introduces artillery fire ‘patterns’ into the mix. Your batteries can fire ‘drumfire’ (one hex), ‘barrage’ (a concentric 7-hex pattern) or ‘hurricane’ (a linear 7-hex pattern). There were lots of elegant artillery theories running around during the Great War, so the patterns are an interesting bit of period ‘feel’.

So far, so good. But the game comes off the rails a bit with regards to how all of that fire power actually gets placed on the game board.

There’s no plotting. Rather, a player has three target markers for each firing battery. On the first turn of the process, all three markers are placed on possible target hexes. Two of the markers are ‘dummies’ — only one of them actually designates the ‘real’ target. On the second turn of the process there’s a short scatter routine and then the fire mission impacts with its assigned pattern.

Since the scenarios begin at fairly close range, there isn’t much artillery to sling around in any given scenario. Which is a good thing, because the fires are far too flexible. A 5-minute call-for-fire response wasn’t all that common in 1940, never mind 1916 or 1918. Hurricane fires (‘curtain barrages’ to you old-school types) in particular took extensive (as in hours-long) planning, registration and coordination. They were hardly a fire mission that could be laid on to any target in the field on five minute’s notice.

The use of a trio of ‘possible’ target markers also brings into play something of an artillery “shell game” that has a bit of a gamey feel to it. The placement of dummy target markers constitutes a bluff that can be used to influence an opponent’s actions. Does that part of the call-for-fire process have any sort of real-world analog? Assuming, of course, that “call-for-fire” even has a place at all in a game covering the Great War.

On the positive side, in order to account for the larger, more massive bombardments that often preceded Great War attacks (or trench raids, for that matter), In The Trenches also utilizes extensive ‘pre-game’ artillery fires in some scenarios. Typically the opposing sides set up, and then the attacking player engages in some pre-game carnage as outlined in the Scenario Special Rules. Given the ‘firefight’ scope of In The Trenches, I find this particular mechanism works quite well.

So: We’ve got two game systems covering tactical combat in the Great War, neither one of which quite scores a direct hit with its artillery rules. Infantry Attacks is too rigid and uses a pre-plotting process that can be downright mind-numbing in bigger scenarios. In The Trenches features a system that’s too flexible — probably even too flexible for a World War 2 tactical game. And it can turn a bit gamey in the use of the trio of target markers.

Neither game is entirely ruined by their artillery problems. Infantry Attacks can get a bit tedious when a lot of big guns are involved, but all of the planning and plotting does force a frustrating Great War ‘feel’ on the game. In The Trenches downplays artillery to an extent, so the ‘gamey’ aspects don’t crop up as often as they could were the game set at a higher scale.

In both cases, then, it’s close, but no cigar.

Two salvoes straddle, Part 1

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Matt Foster

As the Great War of 1914-1918 opened, indirect artillery fire was just beginning to come into its own as a weapons system. In the previous decade or so of technological development, many nations had devoted considerable attention to the improvement of explosives, propellents and fuzes. Advancements in steel-making enabled the creation of both larger-caliber and more portable guns. And modern industrial production methods allowed many nations to field truly vast numbers of artillery pieces supplied with large amounts of munitions.

Little wonder then that artillery plays an important role in two recent wargames that cover tactical combat in the Great War: Infantry Attacks, published by Avalanche Press, and Through Mud and Blood, the third installment of the In The Trenches series published by Jeux Grenier Games.

The games operate at different scales, so it’s no surprise that each treats artillery differently. They’re also set during different periods of the war. Infantry Attacks: August 1914 (as the title implies) focuses on the earliest stage of the Great War, specifically on the opening battles of the war in the East. Through Mud and Blood presents a number of ‘firefight’ scale actions set in various theaters and during different periods — although primarily the later war.

What is surprising, to me at least, is that neither game seems to get artillery quite ‘right’. In both cases I think I see what the designers are trying to do. Unfortunately, both seem to fall a bit short of the mark.

[As a brief caveat, please note that I claim to be neither a professional historian nor a trained historical researcher. I am, however, the grandson of a World War I infantryman and I've widely read and studied the subject for close to 40 years. In my distant and misspent youth I was privileged to sit many hours listening to my grandfather talk about his service in The Great War. Not that that gives me any extraordinary insight into the techncial aspects of artillery, but it did spark in me a beyond-ordinary interest in All Things Great War.]

Infantry Attacks presents artillery as a completely inflexible combat arm. Off-board artillery (my main focus here) is allocated in discrete firing concentrations of bombardment strength points that represent batteries/battalions of various calibers. Each player then lists his available concentrations on a roster sheet and then proceeds to make a turn-by-turn plot of the hexes each concentration will target. Artillery affects only the hex it impacts. ‘Friendly fire’ casualties are possible if friendly forces are adjacent to the impact hex, and there is also a minimalist scatter routine (as in the PanzerGrenadier series).

A player can cancel the fire plot for a given concentration at any time — but once a fire plot is cancelled, that particular artillery concentration can’t fire for the rest of the scenario. On-map artillery batteries can fire at whatever they can spot, and they can also move. But once they’ve moved, they can’t fire for the rest of the scenario, either.

I think I understand the goal of the mechanism. Artillery wasn’t very flexible in 1914, and there were frequent instances of fires shifting to the wrong places at the wrong times or not shifting at all. The mechanism in Infantry Attacks encourages careful planning (especially on the attack) and a scrupulous adherence to the pre-planned schedule.

Historically, even in 1914, artillery wasn’t completely inflexible. Most nations made some sort of attempt to put tools in the hands of the infantry that they could use to communicate with the artillery. Sometimes communications worked in a limited fashion; often it did not work at all. The relationship between infantry and their artillery in 1914 wasn’t exactly a happy one.

For the wargamer, the question is whether or not Infantry Attacks’ fire plotting mechanism is an acceptable trade-off between process and effect. A system that used a couple of tables and a few dice rolls to attempt communications might have a better ‘feel’ to it – but such a system would need to include target reference points and possible pre-plotted fires for each concentration. ‘Real life’ artillery fire planning can be pretty complicated. So would the results, essentially, be the same — only for a lot more work and dice-rolling? And would such a mechanism increase the complexity of the rules?

I’ve only managed to get in a few plays of Infantry Attacks since its arrival here in the swamp. While the artillery mechanism feels very limiting and is at time frustrating to deal with, it occurs to me that the strict limits on how artillery can respond to the changing battlefield is one of the fundamental differences between Infantry Attacks and its parent system, PanzerGrenadier.

The games use the same core game mechanisms to simulate two very different types of warfare. At first encounter, I think a lot of players probably wonder how the same system can accommodate both ‘set piece’ infantry warfare and World War II’s mobile warfare. It occurs to me that one of the key differences lies with the artillery.

Since this subject is running a bit long, I’ll pick up the tale of the “In The Trenches” system in my next blog post.

The Great War on the Big Table

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Matt Foster

Before I dive into a wargamer’s look at artillery in World War One (as mentioned in my previous post), I figured it probably would be a good idea if I first delivered quick looks at the two games I’ll be waving around during the discussion.

Infantry Attacks: August 1914

First to arrive — some weeks ago now — was August 1914: Battles for East Prussia, which is the initial offering in the new Infantry Attacks series from Avalanche Press.

The Infantry Attacks rules are close relatives of APL’s PanzerGrenadier series rules. The game scales are the same with 200-meter hexes and 15-minute turns. However, the combat units in the two series represent different sized formations; in PanzerGrenadier a typical unit is a platoon, while in Infantry Attacks most units are company-sized. Infantry Attacks devotes substantial additional “rule-age” to artillery fire and artillery ammunition (among other things), which balloons the series rules to a hefty 35 pages (compared to PG’s slim 16 pages of rules).

That said, the two series share many core mechanisms. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say most PanzerGrenadier players will be up and running with Infantry Attacks in fairly short order. Otherwise the rules aren’t as complex as you might expect from 35 pages, although I would recommend that total noobs to the series take a look at the “Infantry Attacks in Five Minutes” download on the APL website.

The game’s physical package is in line with the latest of APL’s releases in the PG series. The six cardstock maps, produced by a new artist, are another small advance for a publisher that has occasionally struggled with map art in the past. The counters are very attractive and clean (as usual) and charts and tables are printed on the familiar tan cardstock. My overall impression is that it’s an attractive, clean and very functional graphic presentation.

A more recent arrival is Through Mud and Blood, the third game of the In The Trenches tactical series from Jeux Grenier Games.

Through Mud and Blood

The first two games in the series were, more or less, “super-DTP” productions that featured pre-mounted, cut-em-out countersheets. I skipped the first game in the series (“Opening Engagements”), mostly because I found the mixed bag of scenario topics less than compelling. The second game (“The Lost Generation”) piqued my interest, however, and I’ve played it a number of times.

The game scale for In The Trenches is 100-meter hexes and five-minute turns, with most pieces representing platoon-sized units. While the game’s command system rewards players for operating their troops in company-sized formations, In The Trenches is very much more of a “firefight” scale game than it is a “battle” game like Infantry Attacks.

Unlike its two predecessors in the series, Through Mud and Blood comes with professionally-printed, mounted and die-cut counters. For gamers who wrestle DTP counters with rhomboidal cuts and slipping X-acto knives, this is a definite step up. As with all of the Grenier-published games I’ve played, the counter artwork is very crisp and functional. The production quality of the countersheet overall is excellent — better in many aspects than the counter work produced by some of the much larger players in the market.

The maps? Well. Aaa. Mmm. These are truly a mixed bag for me. Previous games in the series have featured 12 x 18 inch maps printed on a heavy, glossy stock. TMB’s maps are essentially half that size, checking in at 8.5 x 11 inches. They’re printed on the same glossy stock as earlier maps. The graphic style is also similar to the earlier games — clear and functional, if not particularly inspired — with the exception of the “Hill 06″ map that uses a color palette that’s very dark indeed. On parts of the “Hill 06″ map, in fact, the black-lined hexgrid all but disappears into the map’s dark colors.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the series, the mapboards in the ITT series are not geomorphic — they are all historical bits of battlefield from the Great War. So in general, the actions represented in Through Mud and Blood are much smaller firefights than those found in earlier games of the series. After some of the heavy-duty actions in the series’ second volume, this is a little bit of a let-down. I imagine it does, however, make this a very good game for introducing new players to the ITT rules.

Gaming the familiar unknown

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Matt Foster

Most wargamers are at least casual consumers of military history. An interest in some or another item along the rich, lengthy timeline of mankind’s most rigorously embraced and universal pasttime (i.e. finding clever ways, and even cleverer excuses, for blasting each other to bloody flinders) is typically what initially draws us in to our little corner of the gaming universe.

Whoa. Wait a second. I’m not trying to get philosophical here. What I’m heading toward is this: We’re all generally familiar with the ‘received imagery’ that characterizes past conflicts. But with the exception of a few of our most recent wars — fought since the introduction of film photography and serious, clinical methods of record-keeping — many of us (myself included) have a limited understanding of how elements found in many of our wargames ‘really’ worked in battle.

Napoleonic skirmishers, for example. Wargames that try to portray them nearly always screw something up. I’m not exactly sure how a skirmish line worked on the battlefield. I’m not that sure which armies used them (and when), how their usage changed from the 1790s through 1815, how many played a role in any given battle nor even (just being honest) what they REALLY did. But I’m pretty sure that the treatment they get in many wargames doesn’t quite square with history.

A British 60-pounder in action during the Great War.

Another iconic element that wargames (and wargamers) seem to struggle with is indirect artillery fire. I guess in this case I’m looking primarily at tactical and grand tactical wargames. It’s a vexing subject.

Given that a lot of gamers (and some game designers) have first-hand familiarity with the processes and effects of modern-day “off-board artillery” I think it’s interesting that so few games come even remotely close to getting it right.

Sometimes I think that designers trip themselves up when they convince themselves that their game is incomplete without some sort of detailed treatement of artillery. Games set at the ‘man level’ — like SPI’s old Sniper and Patrol games — should have skipped it entirely. In Patrol, at 5 meters per hex, the blast radius of a super-heavy artillery round covered nearly an entire geomorphic map sheet (usually about one-sixth of the map). It’s nuts to even attempt to ‘game’ something like that — you’re not calling 8-inch artillery onto the bad guys when you’re close enough to throw rocks at them.

In cases like that (and there are others) a designer just needs to admit his game is set after Arty has done its work and move on from there.

The time scale of the call-for-fire process screws up a lot of game designs. Even well-regarded ‘technical’ games like ASL and ATS struggle with it, principally because of issues with turn scale, time compression and predictability. A more chaotic process gives artillery a better ‘feel’ in the Combat Commander series of game. Still, in all three games we’re really dealing with artillery being commonly used well inside the “danger close” engagement zones that battery commanders rarely approved.

Platoon-level games usually get closer to the mark. Their longer time scales and larger hex scales are much easier to square with a real-world call-for-fire process. First-generation games like PanzerBlitz and its various offspring struggled with implementing artillery terminal effects on different target types (armored vs unarmored), but elements like call cycle timing and engagement ranges always seemed more appropriate.

Keeping all of that in mind, it’s time for me to steer back onto my original theme: Gaming elements of warfare that seem familiar because of our passing acquaintance with history, but about which we have limited first-hand technical knowledge.

Just a camporee with cannons...

The popular history of World War One is clogged with the imagery of slaughter on an industrial scale. Machineguns mowing down rows of advancing infantry, massive artillery barrages burying entire trenches packed with grunts, gas rolling across the battlefield like a silent wave of horror. Particulary because of the general stalemate in the West from 1915-1917, the Great War has received scant attention as a topic for tactical gaming.

Tactical reality for the grunts of World War One, however, was far from a static, wait-to-die affair. Although the battlefield was indeed dominated by then-modern methods of technological slaughter there was still plenty for an infantryman to do.

A couple of fairly recent games add substantially to the Great War’s tactical wargaming library. In The Trenches is a series from Grenier Games — the third volume is shipping now — set at the platoon level with a hex scale of 100 meters and 5 minute turns. Infantry Attacks is a PanzerGrenadier spin-off from Avalanche Press that tackles things at the company level, with 200-meter hexes and 15-minute turns.

The games take distinctly different approaches to the topic of indirect artillery fire. Artillery was undeniably one of the dominating factors on the World War One battlefield, which means in both cases the artillery mechanisms are crucial components of the game designs.

In my next blog post (or two, maybe), I’ll be taking a more detailed, side-by-side look at these two games. Tune in next time for my take on where these games work, where they don’t and how they address some of the foggier aspects of history surrounding the world’s first truly industrial war.

Wrapping up Horus Heresy

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Matt Foster

After a number of weeks here on the Big Table, I think it’s about time to wrap up my thoughts on the subject of the new Horus Heresy. It’s not quite time for the game to go back in the box, but at least it’s time for other games to start to get a little bit of face time on my cyberpages here.

All things considered, I’ve found the game very enjoyable. No game is perfect — as I’ve mentioned before — and Horus Heresy has a few pesky flaws, but really not that much to right home about.

In addition to the few items I’ve pointed out in previous posts, I’ve discovered one other minor aggravation. For me, at least, it’s something that does slow down game play a little bit. I’m wondering, would it have killed the presentation of the game if Fantasy Flight had managed to get a NAME somewhere on those stand-up figures of the ten Heroes?

Angron is a bit unhappy after routing off the spaceport.

Perhaps at full size it’s easy to tell all of the heroes apart. But at ‘normal gaming distance’ under ‘normal gaming light’, sometimes I find it a real PITA to figure out just who might be who. Yes, yes: I know there’s a little color-coded section beneath the portrait that matches the color scheme on the little “legion indicators” — but that’s starting to get into squinty-eyed territory for me when I might be 5 or 6 feet away from the little 2-inch images.

It’s a problem that likely evaporates after you’ve played the game 10 times (I’m not that far along), but in the meantime it IS a wrestling match for me. Heroes are generally always accompanied by units (such as Space Marines) that should help identify them, but sometimes I think graphic designers for games need to take a hint from their compadres in web design and follow the simple mantra of usability: Don’t make me think.

At any rate, again, not a gut-buster by any stretch of the imagination. Just another little weed that needs to get whacked out of the garden.

So. I suppose a few hard-won observations about game play would be in order at this point.

When the game is setup for the first time and the players step back to take a look at their opponent’s stockpile, there are usually a few moments when the Imperial player may despair and the Chaos player may allow himself a little chuckle. There are a LOT of Chaos units in that stockpile. Not so much for the Imperial player.

Chaos has to land more guys than this.

But here’s the trick: Those units are all in the Chaos STOCKPILE. They are NOT on the game board. The challenge for the Chaos player is to get as much of that large force into the game as quickly as possible. The slower the buildup, the more chance an aggressive Imperial player has to defeat arriving forces in detail.

Here’s another common-sense tidbit: The earlier Chaos units land, the more actions they can take before the game is over. Yeah, I know that sounds rock simple stupid, but it’s a point that’s easy to overlook. All of those little circles on the Initiative Track can play mind-tricks. The game is deceptively short. There are only five Refresh phases in the game. That means units in the game will be able to activate a maximum of six times in the course of a game.

Most Chaos units will expend one of those activations just to get onto the map. So there is a built-in “delay” of sorts before they can join in all of the shootin’. Chaos units that don’t land until after the first Refresh are even more limited — they will essentially miss a third of the game before they can do much of anything. Ouch.

The other day in my post about combat, I wrote a little bit about Rout. When a unit retreats out of combat, the area it retreats into is marked with a “Routed Activation” marker. Rout pretty much puts a unit out of the fight for two Refresh phases. Because of their overall numerical advantage, very often Chaos players may want to “fight to the death” when things swing against them in hopes of taking down a few Imperial units as they go.

For the Imperial player, the situation is nearly the exact opposite. Imperial forces don’t receive a lot of reinforcements as the game rolls on, so they can’t afford to get stuck into drawn out, bloody battles. They should rarely attack without a clear advantage in Total Combat Rank — primarily because they need to expend a good number of cards for their “shields” to soak off battle damage. Chaos can afford to burn a few combat steps in nearly every battle; the Imperial forces cannot.

As a caveat, I’ll note that games can run long — especially if either player has a tendency to over-analyze things. Large battles where each side may have 15-18 Combat Cards in hand might take 5 or 10 minutes to play out if somebody decides to engage in too much head-scratching. Ten minutes times lots of battles can add up pretty fast.

That said, I think both the card-based Orders mechanism and the card-based Combat resolution really serve to make Horus Heresy a very interesting and fresh ‘feeling’ wargame.

Plus, the little figures are pretty cool.

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