Tag: France

Grizzled Mon Amis: WWI Card Game

Sacre Bleu, what is this? Ah, a clever cooperative card game about WWI French troops in the trenches, with a strange way of being cooperative, but The Grizzled works.

The goal? Survive. No path to glory. No Anthill to take. Just survive long enough to end the war in one piece, or at least with fewer than four wounds.

My set up as Charles Sauliere with coffee chits. Note the war pile (upper left corner), speech tokens, and peace pile (next to box). Sauliere’s lucky charm is rain, which triggers discards.

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Hard Knocks: Alsace 1945 Scenario 1

Alsace 1945 uses 2.5 miles per hex, one turn equals one day, and most units are regiments with some battalions and weak divisions sprinkled in. Corps HQs get their own counters with the ability to support two attacks and two overruns, but an unlimited number of defensive supports, per turn. HQs also serve as supply centers and a chit-pull activation by HQ system offers some variety from traditional Igo-Ugo

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1916 Verdun – Campaign of Attrition A BoardgamingLife review

CSL’s new treatment of the battle certainly does have a philosophy, and it is a philosophy that is worth becoming acquainted with if you have any sort of interest in the battle. Part of that philosophy has to do with the designer’s (Ray Weiss) intention to create a series of games (called 2140) whereby players can enjoy the sort of unfussy simulation models that belonged to the vintage era of SPI as well as GDW’s Series 120 titles.

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Napoleon 1806: The Boardgaminglife Review

While this design, to my eye, offers the occasional mild suggestion of a concept hailing from a range of other models, ultimately it is very much set within its own identity. The components, as one often sees in European designs (this one hails from France) are first rate, with a pleasing aesthetic running through the entire inventory. The game works at corps level, with the current strength and fatigue levels of individual corps depicted via an assortment of wooden cubes (strength) and cylinders (fatigue) placed on the off-board tracks assigned to each corps. There is a distinction between infantry and cavalry strength (different colored cubes whose relevance kicks in during combat), while one might assume that artillery is factored into the range of combat results as well as some events that can come into play.

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