GamersInfo.net

World War I was a war that saw technological changes. These changes came into their own due to the nature of how the war played out against the countries waging this struggle. Trench warfare, tanks, gas and airplanes were just some of the innovations that had been developed over the course of the war.

With that in mind, I decided to try Guns of August, published by Matrix Games, a grand strategic game. I was curious to see if it was different from an old Avalon Hill board game I had played as a young man. I can honestly say that it was vastly different from what I had played those many years ago.

First is the playing field, which has the standard terrain features with an overlaid hex grid system. The playing pieces are common square cardboard type, similar to if you were playing a board game. There are five scenarios ranging from three turns to six long. Each turn has three to four impulses — or if you would like, think of it as mini-turns.

There is a stacking limit - depending on terrain - and a fog of war in that you never know what the other side is doing, except for stacking, and what the country symbol is. There is economics, a national status, morale, transfers and much more that makes for a pretty comprehensive game.

At this point, some disappointment began to set in. I'm used to playing war games in which movement is based on the unit being able to assault at will. What we have with this game is assaulting based on a unit's headquarter having assault points. If the HQ runs out of assault points, your units are stalled on anything other than normal and strategic movement. I guess this reflects having a stalemated front, but this also makes for a boring game, since you must buy assault points to continue your offensive, and these points are only awarded on the next major turn.

Movement is shown by arrows showing what hexes you can move into, and each movement is one hex only, unless you use strategic moves. This reflects using a railway system; yet again, you are limited to how many units can be moved by that rail system. This reflects how hard it is to move corps-sized units from one area to another.

Another disappointing aspect of the game is that air units and the naval units are indirectly used. For air units, you assign them to fronts, and naval units are assigned to different sea regions. If you sent enough to a region, you control that region and restrict transportation. Once again, I'm more in favor of having actual units to move.

You have what are called refits, which really are repair points, to bring your units back to full strength. Again, this is a limitation reflecting the intensive loss of troops on both sides and eventually exhaustion setting in as corps are whittled down by loss of manpower.

Research is represented by development in set areas, such as tanks, air power, gas and trench warfare. Each of these has different levels that, if achieved, make your units stronger or, in the case of trench warfare, harder to dislodge the opposing side.

National morale reflects the will of the civilian population to support the war effort; the lower the will, the harder it is to keep up morale of the troops, which is all incorporated into the combat system. Combat is one of number-crunching a stack of units versus the defender and hopefully moving units one hex to occupy cities. Once again combat is based on if you have assault points; otherwise, there can be no combat.

In all honesty, I was disappointed with the game based on the fact that movement on any front was limited to having assault points, or that other parts where based on indirect movement. This makes for a very slow game. Frustration set in after a few phases were played. I don't mind playing a game that tries to reflect what the war was like, but I feel this went too far in keeping the flavor realistic. Someone who plays this game as their first taste of a war game may be turned off from other war games. This is one game that a die-hard player might complete, but in my case wasn't to be.