MGPRP: Command pocket reviews
Issues 50-54
· Command #50: Back to Iraq (2nd ed.)
· Command #51: The Fire Next Time
· Command #52: Grunwald 1410
· Command #53: Iron Dream
· Command #54: When Dragons Fight
Command #47-54:
“Like the late phase of some painters and sculptors, there is the occasional glance of grandeur derived from the years-long experience
but mostly utter dreck which just resembles the once great oeuvres. The rare wandering into the new and unexplored, coupled with
the "thing I wanted to do all my life" territories produces the foreseen outcome.” PK
“ID brings up a general point about many of the late Command games. No ZOCs and straight attritional combat systems.
The CRTs tend to has step losses only. The games tend to become scrums where the defender tried to stack as many steps as
possible (unit quality meaning very little) on VP hexes while the attacker tries to kill off as many steps as he can, as fast as he can.
Without ZOCs, the only way to close off reinforcements is to occupy all 6 surrounding hexes. This becomes a pattern. For some,
it's a fast, easy way to do games and I believe it is good for some situations. After a while, it got old for my tastes.” MJP
Command #50: Back to Iraq (2nd ed.)
------------------------
Command #51: The Fire Next Time
------------------------
“The theater was crammed into too small a map, which was ugly, with large hexes. Prefered S&T version on the same subject. C-“ MJP
“This is an interesting little game that can be enjoyed by a grognard introducing the hobby to a newbie, or by two grognards looking for a change of pace.
The rules are simple and direct. I found the map to be quite ugly and the pieces in my copy were blurry due to a very slight registration problem.
The game itself depicts a huge army versus a slightly more agile but much smaller adversary. With a minimum of fussy rules, it does a pretty good
job capturing the salient issues of a possible India-Pakistan war. Indian airpower is critically important to maintaining the army's drive.
The Pakistanis will find the use of nukes to be very tempting. The early Pakistani mobilization scenario is better balanced but still very tough
on Pakistan. It's hard to defend Pakistan but nearly impossible to attack India when most of the map depicts Pakistani territory.
All in all, this is a good effort that left me even more interested in learning about this hotspot. B+” SaS
Command #52: Grunwald 1410
------------------------
“A Ted Raicer game which could have been good, if it saw anything vaguely resembling a development effort. Too dumbed down, linear.
Probably the only Raicer game I never finished.” PK
“Very "gamey" system in which the player with initiative determines the order in which move/attack is sequenced, which leads to strange situations.
Like Poles defending behind a river line, Teutonic knights charging (using a move chit) up to the river's edge, then playing the attack chit for the Poles,
and making them attack across the river while the "charging" knights receive a defensive bonus! Like some --but not all-- Command games,
it assumes that certain results of the battle must be written in stone: thus, the Teutons start on attack --the real battle was a tense affair with both
sides waiting to see who'd make the first move-- and all infantry present are not even represented by counters. Lacking in period feel;
I'd take a Markham 3W quad or --better yet-- Fred Bey's Vae Victis designs over this any day. VV's "Poitiers" is a prime example of a mag game
being simple, fun, *and* capturing the feel of the period it's covering.” GF
“I found that the non-traditional turn structure was an interesting take on the LIM games that I had played up to that point. Yeah, maybe an accompanying
article would have been nice. But the game worked very well for me, both as a solitaire game and for gaming with people who prefered low-complexity games.” KD
Command #53: Iron Dream
------------------------
“Again a victim of Command´s problems at that time. With better production values, great, as it is just another (although rather good) East Front game.” PK
“Battle of stacks and attrition. VPs for cities results in moving from one scrum to another. C” MJP
“An excellent game for both grognard and recruit, feels like those classic wargames we cut our teeth on, where you concentrate on, movement,
placing your units, organizing your attacks etc and not on the meaning of rule 123.16. By Starting in October after walk-over of the borders is done,
both players have tough decisions to make. The choice of phases- move or fight and the ability of the Germans to move through ZOC in good weather
works well to show how a well planned blitz could be devasting. The Army/Corps scale makes it a game that can be played in a resonable amount of time....an A+” JV
Command #54: When Dragons Fight
------------------------
“Overall I can't believe a game can be so balanced, fluid, fun, with sophisticated play but yet with so few counters and so few rules.
This game is really nifty. <...> All in all, I can't say that I have completed or enjoyed this many solo games ever before.” PMC
“I had a solitaire play through of this last year and enjoyed it. Think of it as a 21st Century Normandy Campaign
- the Chinese must break out before the Taiwanese bottle them up sufficiently for the US to intervene. There are several options
for the Chinese landing sites and the Taiwanese can't cover them all so it can set up an intriguing "Battle of the build-up" scenario.
A pretty clean, simple and fast playing game. I'd say it would be playable in an evening. Overall a nice swansong.” TB
“Well if you are going to go out, may as well go with a bang. This is a very good "game". Map is okay, counter art is good, rules tight,
small amount of errata, very minor. A real 'chess puzzle' for both players, each side has its weakness and strengths, plays pretty quickly
and seems very balanced. Really showed what they could do at XTR, even right up to the death. Rating B+” CH
Back to the MGPRP main page