Vendor: Compass Games
Type: Board Games
Price:
65.95
Designer |
John Gorkowski |
Publisher | Compass Games |
Players | 1-10 |
Playtime | 120-1200 mins |
Suggested Age | 0 and up |
Vendor: Compass Games
Type: Board Games
Price:
99.95
Designer |
John Gorkowski |
Publisher | Compass Games |
Players | 1-3 |
Playtime | 120-240 mins |
Suggested Age | 11 and up |
Vendor: Hollandspiele
Type: Board Games
Price:
102.95
Designer |
John Gorkowski |
Publisher | Hollandspiele |
Players | 2 |
Playtime | 150 mins |
Suggested Age | 14 and up |
Vendor: Compass Games
Type: Board Games
Price:
78.95
Designer |
John Gorkowski |
Publisher | Compass Games |
Players | 1-2 |
Vendor: Legion Wargames LLC
Type: Board Games
Price:
67.95
Designer |
John Gorkowski |
Publisher | Legion Wargames LLC |
Players | 2 |
Playtime | 120-180 mins |
Vendor: Compass Games
Type: Board Games
Price:
79.95
Designer | John Gorkowski |
Publisher | Compass Games |
Players | 2-5 |
Playtime | 120-240 mins |
Suggested Age | 11 and up |
Vendor: Compass Games
Type: Board Games
Price:
74.95
Designer | John Gorkowski |
Publisher | Compass Games |
Players | 1-2 |
Playtime | 120-1440 mins |
Vendor: Compass Games
Type: Board Games
Price:
89.95
Designer | John Gorkowski |
Publisher | Compass Games |
Players | 1-2 |
Playtime | 120-1440 mins |
Suggested Age | 12 and up |
Red Poppies Campaigns (RPC) enables players to game WWI battles from the perspective of battalion and regimental command posts. Players unleash opening bombardments and then maneuver infantry companies against machine gun fire to fight battles on historically accurate maps of actual battlefields. The streamlined system for fire and movement enables a rapid ebb and flow with minimal dice rolling and lots of historical chrome. Generally speaking, units can move or fire once per turn – machine gun fire is the notable, unpredictable exception – and can initiate melee after a move. Fire resolution requires only one dice roll, made by the target and modified for the relevant circumstances such as incoming firepower, terrain, visibility, etc. Throughout, players must effectively manage the dynamic tension between top down control and bottom up initiative to get their units onto the objective before their ever-eroding control crumbles to nil.
A tragic irony of WWI unifies all aspects of game play. For most of the war, effective command and control of tactical units required a degree of concentration which threatened their survival. In other words, the game illustrates the inverse relationship between a unit’s responsiveness to orders and its durability. So players must “form” infantry units to get them moving and then “disperse” them at the right moment to hold the ground gained. Enemy fire can force premature dispersion which must be remedied to get an attack moving again. For infantry, the formed condition represents troops arrayed for the convenience of top down command such as those deployed in skirmish line or a column-of-march while the dispersed condition represents troops spread out and hunkered down for their own survival.
The game illustrates the evolution of tactics during WWI. In time, gas wafts across the battlefield, unit statistics change to show better performance while dispersed, a new method of tactical command and control (the “blob”) emerges, mortars pop up like mushrooms after the rain, and artillery becomes more responsive. In addition to short, standalone scenarios, RPC has a “campaign” mechanism so players can link a series of interdependent scenarios to simulate battles that spanned days, and nights. During these campaigns, the results of one scenario affect the start of another so conservation of force, supply lines, and replacements all become issues. Players will get a sense of slogging forward in yards per day - at great cost – as they plot days of grinding combat.
Product Information
Vendor: Compass Games
Type: Board Games
Price:
114.95
Designer | John Gorkowski |
Publisher | Compass Games |
Players | 1-7 |
Playtime | 120-1440 mins |
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
-For the Fallen, by Robert Laurence Binyon
Balance of Powers pays fitting tribute to the fallen with a respectful presentation of their bitter struggles in the air, on land, and at sea.
The game offers players a corps-level recreation of the entire First World War from the Somme through Dar-es-Salaam and on to Tsingtao. A roll-to-hit system enables air and (optional) naval combat to scale from the small dogfights of the Fokker Scourge to the mighty clash of dreadnoughts at Jutland. On land, corps entrench by flipping which opens up an in-hex dimension for every trench battle to simulate the tactical ebb and flow that animated the front even during strategic "stalemate".
Since victory hinges on territorial control, the opposing sides feed men into the mill hoping to win a war of attrition before accumulated demoralization triggers a domestic political crisis to upset their balance. The prospect of a "breakthrough" to the green fields beyond motivates ceaseless attacks, but it's ephemeral until tanks and planes arrive in numbers. The presence of specific admirals and generals, including the U-boat ace Lothar von Arnauld de la Periere, makes the game personal.
A haggle-based diplomacy system enables history buffs to recreate the land-swap politics of the period, or players can opt for a simpler, streamlined schedule of neutral entry with a dash of randomness added for surprise. Production is as simple as 1-2-3 to avoid excessive math while enabling players to comprehend the "cost" of their losses. In the end, victory goes to the side that beats its historical record.
Link to Zun Tzu module> https://www.vaibhavhospital.com/download/hrl36m0iko6by9c/Balance+of+Powers.ztb