Tag: Cyrano

02/18/17

GrogHeads Reviews High Treason!

See you in court! ~

Jim Owczarski, 18 February 2017

Function before form!
Function before form!

My love of the Napoleonic era is high, wide, and deep, but I’ve always taken the age of empire to be my second true love, if such a thing can be countenanced.  Much of my early study of the era came from Jan Morris’ Pax Britannica trilogy, particularly the first volume, Heaven’s Command.  Far from an academic exercise, it’s an evocative series of sketches of the men and women who peopled the British empire, giving more weight, it has always seemed to me, to the interesting as opposed to the more objectively significant, although one can certainly be both.

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11/19/16

TANKSgiving! – The Great War “Tanks” expansion

tanksgivingheaderCyrano goes back to the trenches for the earliest days of tank warfare with a look at the “Tanks” expansion for The Great War ~

Jim Owczarski, 19 November 2016

Since the powers-that-be hereabout have imprudently given me another platform, I’ll make this particular teapot just a bit more tempestuous:  Memoir ’44 is a war game.

The best-selling installment of Richard Borg’s Command and Colors system — and one of the best-selling war games of all time — is criticized for its abstractions, its toy factor, its simplicity, its lack of tactical granularity, and, for all I know, the devaluation of the dollar against the yuan.  I for one, while acknowledging its limitations, love the toys, the card-play that creates uncertainty, the straight-forward rules, and the ability to fight the entirety of the D-Day landings in an afternoon.

It shouldn’t, then, be too great a surprise that I was looking forward to the Plastic Soldier Company’s release of The Great War, Mr. Borg’s take on World War I, and particularly the tank expansion. The bicentennial of the war is upon us and I wanted to see what tweaks would be brought to the system to make it more than just World War II with less elegant tanks.

box

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11/9/16

GrogHeads Previews Platoon Command

LNLP’s forthcoming game gets the once-over from our preview crew ~

Jim Owczarski, 09 November 2016

Let’s get this out of the way, shall we?

Lock ‘n Load Publishing’s forthcoming Platoon Command is not an attempt to reboot Up Front.  It is neither Up Front 2.0 nor is it Up Front Lite.  It is not Up Front Redux featuring behind-the-scenes footage of how a scoundrel and his shadow company absconded with more than 300,000 Kickstarter dollars and left a trail of litigation and rage.  Not that I’m bitter, of course.

No, courtesy of a rare bit of wisdom from corporate gameocracy, Up Front, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof, is now available from the Wargame Vault and everyone interested can play this classic for a reasonable sum. Even more gratifying, the going rate for second-hand copies has now plummeted accordingly.  And besides, Platoon Command, though a card-driven game of World War 2 squad-level combat, bears little resemblance to its far more complex, some have even dared to say obtuse, ancestor.

Not. Up. Front.
Not. Up. Front.

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11/5/16

Modern-Day Napoleonic Battles & Travels, Part the Second

Cyrano’s next entry to the travelogue ~

Jim Owczarski, 05 November 2016

One of the great joys of travel is discovering something you never thought to find.  This is particularly true for me if it’s something that runs the risk of being lost to time or cultural preference.  A good example is the small memorial sign atop the Stare Vinohrady (Old Vineyard) at Austerlitz.  For all the effort that went into making the battlefield ready for the 200th anniversary back in 2005, it seems no one bothered to put up something more permanent than a simple metal sign, painted white-on-blue, and mounted on two stakes at the site of one of the greatest cavalry charges in history.

Admittedly, depending on how one gets up there, the route to the top of the Stare Vinohrady can be quite the hike and, based on the fair number of beer bottles and cigarette butts in evidence, it seems a popular location for late night fire pits and drink-a-thons.  Still, not long after I laid eyes on the sign — and worked my way through a rough translation of its Czech inscription — I was determined at least to leave it standing and its restoration, however brief, is something I will always remember.

There, better!
There, better!

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09/8/16

Modern-Day Napoleonic Battles & Travels, Part the First

Cyrano delves deep into the world of Napoleonic battlefields in preparation for an eventual visit, and more ~

Jim Owczarski, 08 September 2016

Most images click to enlarge

People are incessantly telling me I’m missing the point.  (ed note – he frequently is, but usually about other things)

They wonder how someone can visit Paris and prefer the Army Museum to the Louvre — pace those areas given over to David — or would rather spend time crawling over an Old Vineyard in Bohemia rather than sitting in a coffee house in Vienna two hours to the south.

They even have a word for what I love to do, viz., “dark tourism”.  I suspect it’s not intended as a compliment.

But I, and I am assuredly not alone, am obsessed with Napoleonic battlefields.  I read about them, watch movies about them, play as many games about them as I can lay my hands on, and, far less frequently than I would like, visit them.  I’ve been to Waterloo twice, Austerlitz once, and, having spent this Summer taking my son to middle-American water parks, am determined that next Summer will bring a visit to Jena-Austerstadt.  The management has asked me to share my own journey to Jena as well as talk about those conflict simulations that take up the campaign and its battles.

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