· S&T #90 Monmouth
· S&T #91 RDF
· S&T #92 Iwo Jima
· S&T #93 American Civil War
· S&T #94 Nordkapp
· S&T #95 Soldiers of the Queen
· S&T #96 Singapore
· S&T #97 Trail of the Fox
· S&T #98 Central Command
· S&T #99 Thunder at Luetzen
S&T #90 Monmouth
---------------------------
"I had fun with this one. A nice adaptation of the Wellington's
Victory system." TES
"By Leonard Millman and Dr. David Martin, this is one of my favorites
and, IMHO, the best tactical board wargame of an American
Revolutionary battle ever done (not that there have been a lot).
Essentially, it was TSS and Wellington's Victory meeting in 1779.
Less emphasis on fire (unless you're a bunch of rangers in woods)
and more on the bayonet (wind up the British Grenadiers, play their
theme song, and watch them go). A winner." GGG
S&T #91 RDF
-----------------
"Some interesting formation rules but I found it cumbersome." MP
S&T #92 Iwo Jima
-----------------------
"IMHO a gem. A nice solitaire game that I still pull out on
occasion." TES
"What seems to start out as a cake-walk soon turns into a nightmare
as one crapes the barrel for healthy Marine companies... very tense
for a solitaire game." HG
"Gem, a good solitaire design." DM
"Another solitaire game as puzzle." MP
"Judging from the responses I've seen so far, I'm in the minority
about this, but I thought the game was boring. I admit that I never
played it all the way through, but that's because it failed to hold
my interest. I remember reading a review in a game magazine that came
to the same conclusion." RF
"The early posters were saying gem, then the later posters had a
backlash against it. I don't think I would put it in the gem
category, but I did enjoy it. The fact that I know next to nothing
about WWII in the Pacific may have helped me (I had no preconceived
ideas about what should be happening.) Overall, I thought this was
a good subject for a solitaire game." JB
S&T #93 American Civil War
----------------------------
"The rules were a mess, but once I had flowcharted them, this turned
out to be a real gem. It is VG's Civil War-lite, and it shared the
same roots - SPI." HG
"Mediocre, especially when compared to the VG version." MP
"I had fun with this too. Neither a gem nor a dud, but still a good
game imo. I guess it suffers in comparison with the Victory product,
but if you don't want or need the full meal deal, this game might
fill the bill." JB
"The ACW game that, had Eric Lee Smith not left when SPI folded,
would have grown up instead of Victory Games'. There is much that is
similar, but Victory was first with the best." GGG
S&T #94 Nordkapp
----------------------------
"I liked this one, too. A relatively noncomplex straightforward
system." TES
"Gem, an interesting part of the world. Terrain and different unit
capabilities made this very interesting. Other variants allowed one
to "update" the Canadian and USMC units tasked to reinforce
Norway." DM
"Fun game. lots of chrome but not too encumbered by it. Nice air
system." MP
"I thought this was a fine game that I would put in the gem
category. I really liked the "go heavy/go light" decision that you
faced in this game. Playing it, I was reminded a lot of the Northern
Front game in the World War III series by GDW (an excellent series
in my judgment). However, I liked Nordkapp better as a stand alone
product. The GDW Northern Front game was fun in conjunction with the
main show in West Germany. I should check this, but I'll go out on
a limb and suggest that Nordkapp was a Charles T. Kamps design.
Yes, I checked and it is. One of my favorite "unknown" designers.
Is he still active? We'll see another of his designs later in the
S&T 90s. Nordkapp featured a very distinctive map style--you can
tell right away that it wasn't a Redmond Simonsen product. There
were a lot of features in the rules that supported the game very
well. I liked the little OBs and technical information that was
given. And I liked the fact that the back sheet of the rules
presented the counter faces. All that plus Swedish fighter planes,
I mean, how can you go wrong?" JB
"Only played it solitaire it once. It was pretty, but I just wasn't
interested in the topic." GGG
S&T #95 Soldiers of the Queen
------------------------------
"Isandlwana 22 Jan 1879. Appropriately hard to win as the British
but still offered some interesting options for deployment and
tactics." JG
"Gem, even if the games are a bit unbalanced. I would have liked to
see this system extended to other 19th Century battles. IMO,
captures the feel of 19th C grand tactical scale without the
complexities of Wellington's Victory and GBACW." TES
"Another hard game to win as British player. It was an innovative
game and not too bad to play : unfortunately the counters are
"double face" (units of a game on the front and units of another
game on the back) so I decided to cut them in half and glue the
halves on hard cardboard ... but I never did that and the game was
put apart. But if you are interested in this argument this is a
game that you have to buy." PC
"Great subject, played lousy." MP
"Looked interesting, but I was just a little put off by the
"primitive" attempt to include two games in the same issue by
printing the counters for one game on the backs of the counters for
the other game. I still think this is a cheesy way of doing
things. Anyway, I didn't play it." JB
S&T #96 Singapore
---------------------------
"I had to admit that the map was as nice as any SPI had put in S&T.
The game played well, and very historically, (the Japanese won our
game) but, due to the nature of the conflict we felt it had limited
replay potential. I've heard others remark (objection, hearsay
evidence) that this is a gem." FEW
"Another gem. This is a nail biter until the last turn. Will the
Japanese capture the reservoirs and force a surrender ? It's an
elegant treatment of a sadly neglected bit of history, and the
historical outcome was by no means inevitable." HG
"Gem. A beautiful map and counters. I'd assert it was eminently
replayable as variants allowed the Commonwealth player to tinker
with deployments, capabilities (i.e. what is Op Matador happened,
what if the Commonwealth trained for jungle fighting). And even
the traditional game is a nail biter." DM
"IMHO the gem of the group. [#90-99]" MP
"One of the things that's been very interesting to me in going
through the games, and hearing the responses of others is to find
out that, while there is a lot of noise (don't get mad anybody, I'm
talking about variability in our judgments), there is nevertheless a
signal. I wouldn't have thought I was going to like this game, but
like lots of others, I found this to be a very involving little
puzzle. I have since thrown it into my briefcase and taken it with
me to conferences on a couple of occasions. It works perfectly in
that setting: Unwinding in your room after the conference
presentations. A clear gem in my book." JB
"A winner. Good game, comes down to the wire if played well." GGG
S&T #97 Trail of the Fox
-------------------------
"Best of the 'TSR' S&T's." WS
"I commented just a couple of weeks ago that this was a good game,
but not a gem like Desert Fox. Had I just played out my interest in
the system, or was this part of the campaign just plain not as
interesting as the great sweeps through the Western Desert?" JB
S&T #98 Central Command
--------------------------
"’Played it only twice, but I liked it. I especially liked the US
transport constraints that required good planning by the
US player." TES
"Sorta’ like Nordkapp (in the air anyway) Situation didn't work as
well." MP
"My first S&T game ever, so I feel much obligated to reply:
Good points:
- The US reinforcement schedule: really makes you think ahead.
- While not as detailed as Crisis Korea 1995, the air game works
pretty well. Although once the USAF shows up it is pretty much over
for the Soviet air force.
Bad points:
- I think the ground scale is way too big. I forgot what it was
exactly, but I remember that 6 or 7 unit stacks were pretty common.
- Those Soviet mech bttns that can "dismount" and forms two separate
units, one the carrier the other the infantry component, both being
pretty decent combat units. Phbbbttbbt!" EH
"Another Chuck Kamps design. I'll gemify this one. Others have
commented on the force pool concept that was used here--As the
American, you need to make a decision about what forces to use your
limited transport resources on—and there are some real consequences
to choosing well or poorly. I'm not sure that I ever figured out
what the optimal mix was. Here is a very minor irritant. The
combat system is pretty clean, but there are *lots* of idiosyncratic
situations that result in DRMs, and they are real hard to remember.
They are all summarized on the map, but the table is printed at a 90
degree angle to the way the typical player is going to be looking at
the map. So do yourself a favor and photocopy that table before you
set the game. You'll thank me." JB
S&T #99 Thunder at Luetzen
----------------------------
"Blah! Watch the brittle Allied armies crack and evaporate at the
first rumor of a French unit in their vicinity. . . senseless
boredom." HG
"Was it the sound of the wargamer's snoring that was thunderous?
I've been waiting to dudify this one. I don't know who the designer
was, but he made a fatal error, imo, when he used a counter scale
that did not correspond to the sizes of the historical units. You
can make 'em divisions, brigades, regiments, or battalions, but you
can't make 'em "2 or 3 battalions". That just won't do. Speaking
as a Napoleonic guy, when we play a board game depicting a battle in
that period, we feed the counter information into a mental scheme
that tells us something about how concepts like "frontage" "depth"
and facing ought to work. It just doesn't work if the counters
represent "rubber-band" units. And I was really bummed about it,
because there aren't a whole heck of a lot of games on the battles
of the Spring 1813 campaign." JB
"Napoleonic campaign done simply. It worked but didn't do much to
enthuse me." GGG
