Field Commander: Rommel Review (Dan Verssen Games)
Over the years, I’ve been getting into the world of solitaire gaming. We’ve all been there at some point where you find yourself with an hour or two to fill, an itching for a game but no one is around or available to game with. With my game group my schedule is the most flexible of the bunch so I find myself with those conditions fairly often. In the past I’ve talked about games like Silverton and more recently BlackBeard (which I did forget to mention it allows for solitaire play albeit with “Dummy” Players which I’m personally not a fan of). Both of which are fine games in their own right and do provide a satisfactory solitaire game experience but lately I’ve been looking for games with more of a historical flare.
Ah Wargames: The ones with paper maps, hundreds of little cardboard counters and must be played under Plexiglas. There’s something about these games that just draw me to them and a whole new world of gaming had been opened up to me once I’ve started to explore this genre. Many of these games are well suited for solitaire play, but many of them feel like playing chess solitaire where you play as both sides of the engagement. But a small subset of the whole new world of gaming is the solitaire game. Publishers like Victory Games, Avalon Hill, GMT Games, 3W and more recently DVG have all published solitaire titles at some point in their company’s history. With the rise of the computer in our daily lives, many of these games have become “obsolete”. Rulebooks which are dozens of pages referencing you to the various charts and tables have been replaced with 0’s and 1’s allowing an engagement in the Pacific to be fought over a few hours instead of a few days.
In today’s world, these games for the most part have lost their place. Of course there are always a few exceptions like Field Commander: Rommel by Dan Verssen Games (DVG). Dan Verssen designed the “Leader Series” of games, which are fairly simple (when compared to a game like Carrier by VG), yet highly enjoyable solitaire games published by GMT Games in the early 90’s. Recently Verssen come out with a new series called “Field Commander”. The first game in the series deals with three major battles which Erwin Rommel really made his name with. The second in line, which should be released fairly soon, is Alexander. Field Commander looks to be the start of a series of solitaire games which are easy to learn (even for non-wargamers), play quickly and are highly enjoyable.
(In the interest of full disclosure I went into this game with negative feelings due to some things that I’d consider a problem with the DVG ordering system, so I went in wanting to not like the game so I didn’t feel the need to order FC: Alexander, but those feelings were quickly dashed aside)
The components to the game I’m a little mixed on. With one hand the artwork is excellent, the counters are easy to read and everything from the artistic side is exceptional. The other hand questions the materials used in publishing. Everything is satisfactory, but just feels cheep. Everything has a very glossy texture and the best way I can describe it is it feels fake because of slightly different production methods and materials compared to the industry standard. Other than that though, that is the only thing that I’ve found which I’m logging a complaint on…The game play is really what matters after all!
The game play itself is very, very fun, and difficult. I will admit at this time that I have just played the first scenario (and for the record have gotten my ass handed to me each time) but I keep coming back. Perhaps it is the masochist in me, perhaps out of all the solitaire games I’ve played (and I haven’t played them all) this one I find very enjoyable. FC:R is an operations level game using area movement. On your turn you move your units which will attack this turn, perform the attack, do non-combat moves and then use the supply action to refit and purchase new units. This provides the player with a lot of options at their disposal and removes some of the “game playing itself” problems that some solitaire wargames have (for example B-17 Queen of the Skies).
Enemy turns follow roughly the same order and the order system and activation system but the chart rolling is very limited. At times it does seem like the enemy is not making logical choices, but overall the game is stacked against you so the illogical choices are needed just to give you a fighting chance. It also gives a feeling that you are playing against someone though because your logical choice may not be your opponent’s logical choice and you never know what is really in their head and this feeling is conveyed through game play. There are also a few instances where you are presented with two or more options for the enemy player and you get to decide the outcome. This provides you with a very slight control over what the enemy does. So in a way during the course of the game you can make some slight decisions to adjust the difficulty level of the game.
Overall the game isn’t perfect. It doesn’t really give you the historical accuracy which many other solitaire games attempt to recreate (which I think is part of their flaw with large rulebooks and tons of charts). The game is good fun, albeit frustrating at times, which provides you as the player a lot of choices and the AI system is pretty straightforward but offers you quite a challenge. For anyone looking for a solitaire game or an introduction to the wargame genre, I highly recommend the game. One other perk about this game is it doesn’t require that much space and can easily be played on a coffee table or desk and with an hour or two for playtime; it doesn’t need to be kept setup for extended periods.
Rating: 4.25 out of 5
‘Til Next Time - Happy Gaming
LvT
So, it seems as of late my muse has left me. I’ll be honest and say that I’ve started this article on at least three different occasions, but the words just were not coming out the way I wanted them. But enough about my woes, its time to ramble on about a game that I’ve been getting into lately: BlackBeard by Avalon Hill. This game had been sitting on my shelf for at least two years and well before GMT announced that they’d be reprinting the game and today I’m kicking myself in the ass for letting it sit for so long. (Just to get this part out of the way now, I have not played the GMT version and from the articles I’ve been reading about it, I have no desire to because it sounds like they’ve taken away everything about this game that I’ve come to love).
In BB you play as one of twenty or so pirates from The Golden Age of Sail raiding merchant ships and ports, running from Warships and King’s Commission ships, getting drunk, torturing captives …etc. You know; all the fun stuff that recently caused Pirates to be romanticized in modern culture. During the course of the game these actions will provide your pirate with notoriety and once a pirate reaches 100 notoriety that pirate wins. In practice this is very difficult to achieve. The more likely condition is each player is allowed to activate three pirates during the course of the game (though only two can be activated at the same time). Once a player has had his third pirate killed then the player with the most Net Worth stashed is the winner (there’s more conditions then that, but for the sake of the article it isn’t worth going into).
