[Board Games] Richard Borg

[Rakor]

I am thinking of picking up one of his battle games (possibly all of them eventually). I think I'd prefer to pick one and grab some of its expansions rather then buy several different games.

I'm thinking of picking up Command and Colors, then eventually Battlelore and very eventually Memoir '44.

Does anyone have any interesting info about these games? Do you think I've picked a bad order? Anyone want to warn me off getting them entirely??

 

[MerricB]

I've got all three of them, and they're all quite different. All extremely cool, though.

C&C:A is possibly my least favourite, but that's purely because the theme and pieces don't attract me that much. I've got friends who absolutely adore it.

Memoir '44 is the simplest, and I've played a bunch of it. (It gets a lot more interesting with the expansions, especially the Air Pack). Lovely pieces, and great gameplay. WW2 is also an era I really enjoy playing in... hey, I also play ASL!

Battlelore is interesting. I haven't played that much of it, though it's cool enough that I have all of its expansions so far. The basic game has a few issues - enjoyable, but slightly flawed. Once you get the Medieval or Scottish pack those flaws disappear and you're in for some awesome games. Call to Arms also allows you to set up your own scenarios (to a certain extent), which is also something in its favour.

I was introduced to the series through M44, which I think is the easiest to grok - and C&C is the hardest - but none of them are extremely challenging ruleswise. Whichever you play, you're in for some fun games.

Cheers!

 

[Rakor]

I'll be coming back here in a few months asking how to get into ASL but for now I have people who would actually play one of the Borg games with me.

Thanks for the advice Merric!

 

[MerricB]

ASL I mostly play solo, although I have a friend who occasionally gets to play it with me (it's more likely we'll play Battlelore, M44, Combat Commander: Europe or Twilight Struggle, though). The ASL Starter Kits (esp. #1) have made it much, much easier to learn the game. I've only been playing about a year, and they're how I started.

Cheers!

 

[Asmor]

I've only played Battlelore, and then I've only played that a handful of times and only just scratched it's surface, but it's a really cool game. It's the sort of game you really sort of want to get one game buddy to play it with consistently, because there's a lot of buildup and progression so if you play it with someone else you need to either go back a few steps to get them up to speed, which might be boring, or pick up where you left off, which might be kind of like throwing them in the deep end before teaching them how to swim.

C&C: A is generally agreed to be the best of the three, though that's certainly not a universal opinion (as Merric's dissent nicely illustrates). If nothing else, the theme and bits are both kind of off-putting to me, and as much as I value a good game I can't help but judge a book by it's cover.

All that said, here's what I'd recommend:

Get Battlelore if you like the pseudo-historical slightly-fantastic theme or if you're looking for a game that starts simple and adds lots of options and complexity.

Get C&C: A if the gameplay is most important to you and you can get over the aethetics of it.

Get Memoir '44 if you like the theme, if you like the price (pretty sure it's the cheapest, not to mention most readily available IME), or if you like the relatively short game play time (not that the others take especially long, AFAIK, but I'm pretty sure Memoir's the fastest of them).

Oh, there's also Gettysburg, which I think is out of print (could be wrong), and was the first game to use the system, IIRC. That seems to be fairly popular as well, though I think the general concensus is that it's third or fourth of the four (not sure if it's better than Memoir or not).

 

[MerricB]

Oh, there's also Gettysburg, which I think is out of print (could be wrong), and was the first game to use the system, IIRC. That seems to be fairly popular as well, though I think the general concensus is that it's third or fourth of the four (not sure if it's better than Memoir or not).

The game is called "Battle Cry", dealing with the American Civil War. It was released by Hasbro/Avalon Hill, interestingly enough. It's Out of Print, and generally regarded as the weakest.

The rankings on BGG:
#12: Command and Colors: Ancients (8.09 from 1890 ratings)
#20: Battlelore (7.93 from 3646 ratings)
#35: Memoir '44 (7.69 from 5319 ratings)
#112: Battlecry (7.39 from 1814 ratings)

Beware: if you buy C&C:A you need to spend 2+ hours putting stickers on wooden blocks before you can play it. Both M44 and BL are ready-to-play.

Cheers!

 

[Asmor]

The game is called "Battle Cry", dealing with the American Civil War. It was released by Hasbro/Avalon Hill, interestingly enough. It's Out of Print, and generally regarded as the weakest.

Thanks, Merric. That'll teach me to speak without doing my research. >_>

 

[juggler434]

I have to say that I really like Battlelore. I havn'te played command and colors, but I played the other three and Battlelore was my favorite, although it took until the scenario where lore cards are introduced to realize it.

 

[Korgoth]

I've played a lot of Memoir, a little Battlelore, some C&C:A and no Battlecry.

I like C&C:A the best so far. It captures the feel of ancient warfare and offers the most opportunity to move units in formation. Having a battle line is actually rewarded (it should be rewarded in Battlelore, but in BL you're better off with tight little knots of troops).

Memoir and C&C:A seem to have the strongest scenarios from an historical perspective. I'm a big fan of the Successors period so C&C:A expansion 1 (Greece vs. the Eastern Kingdoms) was a must (and you won't have to use Roman blocks for the Syracusans anymore!). The scenarios in Memoir are also excellent and the components are extremely nice, but Memoir is definitely the lightest of the big 3 Borg games (also the most fluid, which makes sense for the period). In Memoir you've got only 3 troop types, in C&C:A you've got about a dozen or so (all distinguished very elegantly).

 

[bento]

I've been looking at C&C:A for a year now (reading reviews on Boardgamergeek.com) and finally picked it up Friday night. Spent a few hours putting stickers on, reading the rules and yesterday afternoon played my first solo walk-through game. Here's my impressions:

* Blocks were smaller than I thought they would be. For whatever reason I pictured them to be about twice the size than they really are.
* Loved that the vital stats for units were NOT on the blocks. I've played games that use chits and now that I'm getting older, my eyesight isn't as good as it used to be!
* Loved that cards propelled the action. When I read reviews for M44 I thought that this would make the game action too restrictive. How could turns based on cards mimic actual combat? It can't, but neither can a lot of mechanics that have been tried over the years. Now that I've sit down and had five cards to chose from, I actually like how it focuses me on likley action that ought to be taken, rather than putting the onus on me to come up with tactics on my own.
* Neutral on combat resolution mechanic. The dice seem a little rock-paper-scissor as in many cases there is only a one-out-of-six chance a hit will occur. This will take more playing to figure out if I like it or not.

After it was all together and on the table yesterday my 8 year old son came by and told me "well it doesn't look as boring as I though!" From him that's a great compliment. Maybe in a couple of weeks I can get some games in with RL competitors.