Performance Reviews - Feb 11 - Well, It Has Been a While

Well, it has been two months. Some of you may be wondering, where have I been? What have I been doing? Where are the Performance Reviews? Ok, probably no one but me is saying any of these things. But one day you will!

January was an interesting month. I was sick. A lot. The Flu. Nasty stuff, led to pneumonia, bronchitis, and a sinus infection. I like to get all of my respiratory infections out of the way early, so I can enjoy the rest of the year (if only it were so simple). We also do Role Playing on the first Tuesdays, and Chris has church obligations on the second Tuesdays, which make second Tuesdays questionable. February brought illness to Chris, then tons of ice and snow befell the Northeast, making traveling and game playing difficult at best.

But we did get one(!) night of gaming in during the month of January. We played a handful of filler games such as Slide 5, Maximum Throwdown, and Excape. We even got in a game of Die Säulen von Venedig, with 6, with which I have a strong opinion on. I'll share that, and the opinions of all the other games mentioned with my next post. I like to time travel like that.

As mentioned before, second Tuesdays are questionable due to Chris' church obligations (Chris provides us a place to gather and play games). So John and I decided to throw our own little get-together. These supplemental gatherings (we usually do these on Thursday) are nice because it gives John and me the opportunity to play those two-player, war and war-ish games that no one else ever wants to play.

 We started the night with a couple games of Pixel Tactics, which came out in 2013. It's a fun little tactical card game that plays pretty quick. The rules took a little bit to noodle, simply because of the way turns are broken down. Each Game is broken down into Rounds, each Round broken into Waves, each Wave into Turns, and each Turn a player has two Actions. Had it been broken down like this to begin with we probably wouldn't have had many issues. The other big rule we missed the first game was concerning damage and heroes dying. Heroes die at the end of a Wave, we missed that and were killing them (or healing them) at the end of each Round.

We really liked how each card had different abilities based on where the card was placed. There were also a lot of really neat synergies to be discovered, my favorite being a Dragon Mage in the Vanguard, and an Overlord in the Rear. Very powerful. John had a good combo going with his Leader and another guy that made his Vanguard attackers absolute beasts.

The second game didn't favor me so well. All my cards came up in a terrible order, while John had the benefit of a great opening hand and a Leader that could take advantage of it.

Verdict: I very much enjoyed Pixel Tactics. It is a light, quick, tactical card game that gives some of the same feelings as one of my all-time favorites, Summoner Wars. There are a lot of card synergies to be discovered, and a very large number of match-up possibilities. I also love how each player has an identical deck of cards, but the different combinations of Leaders, and putting Heroes in different ranks makes each deck play out so different.

 Hold the Line: Frederick's War was the other game that hit the table. Here we have what I call a "Tactical Skirmish War Game". This might not be the correct thing to call it, but I must confess ignorance concerning wargaming. Perhaps John has a better name for it.

Some other games that I consider "Tactical Skirmish War Game" would be Memoir '44 or Manoeuvre. Where both of those games use cards to kinda dictate which units you can move and order, Hold the Line: Frederick's War does not. You have the freedom to make any moves that you wish, but you get a variable amount of orders per turn, which is a bit different.

It could very well have been the scenario that we were playing (one with a famous general historically getting beat by a inferior army sitting on a hill (not a history person, John can correct me)), but I did not enjoy Hold the Line: Frederick's War as much as I enjoyedMemoir '44 or Manoeuvre, and not because it didn't start with the letter "M". Even though I was free to choose which units I was activating, I was not a huge fan of the odds I was having to hit units. Leaders seemed unimpressive. Artillery seemed very unimpressive. Needing a natural 6 to hit in nearly every regular situation proved frustrating, especially when most of John's units were on hills or in towns providing them with essentially +1 to defense (making their to-hit a 7, on 3*1d6). In my mind, this combat resolution did not reward tactical play, and an overall strategy is almost moot (other than "sit on a hill and don't move").

Verdict: I didn't hate the game, but I definitely didn't love it. If I want to play a "Tactical Skirmish War Game", I'd much rather playMemoir '44, Manoeuvre, or Commands & Colors: Ancients (I can't believe I forgot about C&C:A!) I'd much rather own one of these three than Hold the Line: Frederick's War. Maybe I'm not playing it right, or maybe it was the scenario's fault. Either way, I doubt I'll give this one another chance on my own doing.

We are now up to something like 310 games with 47 expansions. Slowly but surely will will make it through. Hopefully, we can outpace new acquisitions.

Next week: Le Havre & PitchCar, for real this time.

Cross-posted on BoardGameGeek @ the Board Room on 17 Feb, 2014