Відео

Have you and Grant played Herman’s Rebel Fury yet? I saw that on the left side of the screen. I really enjoy playing that game. I love the turn mechanic system of that game. Any game system that breaks that traditional I move, I attack, now your turn will always grab my interest.

Foote is a classic, but a highly problematic one. He propels many Lost Cause myths in his narrative. He is a gifted writer no doubt, but indeed not a historian. Battle Cry of Freedom is the way superior book.

I believe ICM stands for Improved Conventional Munitions. We used to call it DPICM. Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition.

Thanks for the review. Question: why do hexes have a black dot in them?... More critically, there is an abundance of hex and counter games that are quite undifferentiated (not to say, the same thing)...

Very good video Just wondering what’s your opinion of baseball, especially since there are now MLB games in England And do you recommend the computer games Cricket Captain or Cricket 24

You look like a miniature "French", the butler, from Family Affair.

This video took me back to my salad days in Vietnam with the 1st Infantry Division. We shared our AO with the 11th ACR - "Blackhorse" - and went on a number of joint ops with them, especially along Hwy 13 aka "Thunder Road". At that time, the commanding officer was one George Patton III.

Some thought-provoking quotes from War and Peace: After comparing the self-assurance of various nationalities, Tolstoy concluded with, "...a German's self-assurance is the worst of all, more inflexible and repellent than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth, science, which is his own invention, but which for him is absolute truth." Just before Borodino, Prince Andrei stated that he believed that no prisoners should be taken, adding, "Then all these Westphalians and Hessians Napoleon is leading against us would not have followed him to Russia, nor should we have gone to fight in Austria and Prussia without knowing why." On the issue of Napoleon being called "great", Tolstoy stated, ..."the historians resort to the device of 'greatness.' 'Greatness' would appear to exclude the standards of right and wrong. There is no atrocity for which a 'great' man can be accounted guilty." Yes, War and Peace truly is a book worth reading.

I bought WOTR and received 5 Armies as a gift. I would like to do a Middle Earth weekend. The rules in 5 armies are a bit easier and more streamlined than WOTR, but I still like the grander scale of WOTR which is a richer experience and has more variability to choose where they go. I do like how the Free People's track unlocks more heroes. One of my Large Orcs in WOTR is missing part of his face so I call him 'Scar'. I might let him cross over to 5 Armies to give the Shadow an extra villain and add to his back-story.

When is your may 2024 recap coming up ? Thanks !

Any sorting tips/suggestions for this game? E.g. Cube4Me has no solution yet.

Being really interested in the subject, I am disappointed that they just talk - without showing any game in playing situation, without even explaining what a COIN game is and what they jave in common, without saying what the three future games are about, without mentioning whether it is exclusively 4-player or easily 2-player, or even solo?, length of the rules, duration, etc. Very poor journalism. Just two initiated mumbling "Oh I think Pastafar is the best god" and you don't know what is Pastafar.

I've two small biscuit tins full of dice. I will get more and will get excited about getting them but have probably already gotten enough. Nice looking game and a splendid review.

Best book I ever read

I’mma say, I suspect Roberto di Meglio is the secret sauce that’s missing from Hunt for the Ring, War for Arrakis, Jonathan Strange, etc. No shade on Francesco and Marco, but I’m pretty sure the genius at the heart of these systems is Roberto.

Really enjoyed your video of this great game thanks so much team 😊

Is there an episode of TPA where Alexander tells the story of how it came to be that he became a transplant from the UK? I'd love to hear about it.

Great review!

Great review ! For the tactical battle, I believe you are only supposed to roll one die for each side of the third and fourth sections and using the totals of your Musket and Pike units in these section. (And not roll dice for each row of the third and fourth as per your example). The battle example of page 13 of the rulebook (top right) may lead to confusion but the reason for the second dice roll was the use of the Firing by Forlorn File card in the example. The fourth sector example in the lower left example of page 13 of the rulebook demonstrates this. Great video and really enjoying your channel!

Yeah war of the ring is really underrated as an accomplishment. These guys are right that the theme is on point, but they are vastly underrating the mechanics. It's because the rules are hard for English speakers imo, and it's a little daunting at first because you have so many options. I have been fortunate enough to play it dozens of times.

Masterpiece of a game… great to see you covering it! The tracking of damage is made a lot less fiddly if you grab some coloured cubes for each side, we use some red and blue ones from Pandemic Legacy. The weird triangles ain’t helpful. I’ve thought about the 4 player idea too, particularly as War for Arrakis has done something similar. The 4 player War of the Ring is really great. I reckon you might appreciate War of the Ring all the more when you revisit again having played these other two.

Agree that Battle Cry is a great read - very comprehensive (yet compact) coverage of all the factors contributing to the war. FWIW don't delay on playing The U.S. Civil War. It's a great game. I've observed that plenty of people outside the U.S. seem to like it, which says something.

Interesting observations - now you know how people outside of the UK might feel when reading about the campaigns of Alfred the Great, The English Civil War, The Jacobite Rebellion, :)

I’ll be the 10th Dentist and say that the Foote trilogy is an awful introduction to the US Civil War. Shelby is a better novelist than historian and his wholesale adoption of the Lost Cause narrative is tiresome and outdated. Read Battle Cry of Freedom. Foote has also been a Klan apologist and has a homo-erotic fascination with Nathan Forrest.

Great video. I agree with everyone else that the better read is Battle Cry of Freedom. A better history. Might I also recommend a more recent military history of the Civil War called "A Savage War" by Murray and Hsieh. This was published in 2016 by Princeton University Press. I came across this book at a Half Price book store, and picked it up on a whim. Boy was I lucky, it is right up there with McPherson's in detail but with thirty years more research to build upon. Wargamers especially will appreciate this book most of all. About Shelby Foote, I have and read his trilogy many years ago, before Ken Burn's Civil War made him a familiar face. Recently I came across a clip of him discussing the cause of the rebellion, and was appalled at his casual "lost cause-ism" excuse for the war. I had forgotten about that. Too bad that his southern roots blinded him to the ugly roots of southern rebellion. His words are now printed forever, and do not do him credit.

Shelby's set is so good I read it twice! Great stuff, thanks Alexander.

GBACW has a simplified rule set being developed. I dont know when it will be finished, but I've used a playtest version.

Just listened to Jeff Shaara’s “Gods and Generals” and his fathers original work, “Killer Angels”. For a lighter and novel style about the personas and their struggles in the war I highly recommend the books. Killer Angels is about the battle of Gettysburg and is even more about the personalities rather than the narrative of the war but man, they do give a great perspective on the war.

Great video. Great book for sure. Enjoyed hearing your thoughts. Wargames and history books / personal memoirs definitely go hand in hand - books inspire me to want to find a game that can make what I’ve read that much more “tangible”, and a well-designed game inspires me to look for books to read on the same topic. Great that many game designers include bibliographies noting the books and sources that helped them design their games and understand what really happened with the game topic. .

Hey Alexander, I'm glad you are reading this trilogy. Great for understanding the overall course of the war.

I feel you on that read of The Civil War. I read Blumenthal's three-part series on Lincoln. It was thick, heavy, but satisfying. 54 hours of reading at about 2 hours per day - quite a marathon at a total of ~1200 pages.

Do not regret, Alexander; your shelves are bursting with little space for new games.

The war on the American Plains is often overlooked in Civil War sagas. "Dark Undercurrents" covers this gap through the eyes of the Miniconjou Lakota and a Welsh immigrant, George Edmund Nighy, who became the first Justice of the Peace in Wyoming, a state that was named after Sunset (Wiiyaya), a Lakota Buffalo Road Woman (Warchief). All in under 476 pages.

Good video. I've read Foote's Civil War books decades? ago. Great read. I do have In Magnificent Style, which is a quick push-your-luck game on Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg (day 3). Also have Battles and Leaders of the Civil War books, which was written by the participants, which I have read portions of. I do have Cruel Necessity on the English Civil War.

I'm listening to the same book. My wargame buddy and I are working our way into the Civil War. We wanted more background . I find it to be an easy read, but your point about finding visual aids is well taken. Often wargaming fills in the gap. You really understand the challenges the participants face when you game it. I dont mind the bias, Shelby Foote is upfront about his heritage. All historians are biased, it can't be helped. But a historian who is upfront about their bias, is refreshing.

Hi Alexander. Shelby Footes books are awesome! Don't worry about playing For the People. Play US Civil War. Far better but it takes 3 times as long to play compared to FTP. I have all the GCACW and its my favorite game system, period. They're all great. Its worthwhile to buy them all.

You might like a little known video series called, The Civil War.

I audio booked that trilogy. Each book was 50+ hours. I tried reading them when I was younger but bounced off of them hard. Audiobook was waay better for me. Good luck powering through them! Worthington's series says brigade level.

The Civil War is the American tragedy. Foote improves as a narrative writer in Vol 2 & 3. I always had the opinion that Foote liked CSA generals like Joe Johnston, James Longstreet, and Patrick Cleburne, was ambivalent concerning Robert E Lee, and excoriated John Bell Hood, Bragg, and Beauregard. There's also the contrast between Lincoln and Davis. Lincoln outperformed and Davis was a continual disaster.

For games covering the American Civil War, I lean to strategic studies that cover the entire struggle from the Chesapeake all the way to the Trans-Mississippi Theater. For many years my preference was for A House Divided. More recently, however, I have been won over to The US Civil War, with its beautiful mounted maps. Best wishes to you as you play it, but be warned that it does have a great many rules. My playing of The US Civil War has been focused on the 1863 scenario. Based on what you stated in the video, I think that will be your preference as well. It opens with Lee and Jackson at their peak of strength in Virginia, a stalemate in central Tennessee, General Grant in position to challenge Vicksburg, cavalry units of each side that can go on raids, and a potentially active struggle in northwest Arkansas.

I love reading books about the wargames I'm currently playing. I read Battle Cry of Freedom while I learned GCACW - highly recommend that one!

Foote deliberately wrote the volumes in the Homeric style, using catchphrase descriptions such as tatterdemalion legions to convey a heroic and personal sense of identity running throughout the narrative. He is a novelist by background and wanted to present the conflict from the personal perspective of multiple characters rather engage in an historical analysis.

46:55 For this Newb that just started COIN with CL I wouldn't have suggested starting anywhere else, but now that Vol 2 of GMT's Irregular Combat Series is out "A Gest of Robin Hood" I would go there first. Then CL. Following my interests lead next to LoD as my second purchase and I had to set that defer that to the Grown Ups Table for the present. Then was curious to see the latest entry PP to see how much had changed from Vol 2 to Vol 11, it is swingy to start with, but it introduced me to more COIN mechanics in an easy to follow way. CT is still a little too hard and instead am now tackling AA which seems CL is to it what Red Sea: Conflict in the Horn Of Africa is to Twilight Struggle. I have to wonder if CL wasn't purposely crafted for that purpose. -Least to most complex (Not worried about my interest level as it increases once I get into each game) -- A Gest of Robin Hood - -Cuba Libre - -People Power - -Andean Abyss - On my to try next list: --All Bridges Burning --The British Way (when I find a reasonably priced copy) --Colonial Twilight --A Distant Plain --Falling Sky -- Gandhi - Then when I'm ready for something meatier - Fire in the Lake - Liberty or Death --Pendragon (again when I find a reasonably priced copy) Thanks for the video guys, I've come back to it many times and look forward to your next one. Side note it also really helped me to learn basic strategy by playing all factions as the bots.

I really enjoyed your video. I think it is good to read both the Shelby Foote Trilogy and the McPherson book. I have enjoyed them both. Foote seems to be more CSA friendly to some, but note that at the end of Vol 1 he covered Emancipation, telling of how "the Lincoln music sounded in what would someday be known as its full glory." Further, in his biographical note at the end of Vol 2 (published in 1963) Shelby Foote was very critical of the Southern governors who were then resisting the Civil Rights movement As for the McPherson book, one notable difference is that he spends about a third of his book covering the years leading up to the Civil War. It is good to also get that background.

Superb prose unlike most history books. Sui generis. Also try Donald S. Frazier books.

Great video review, Alexander. As for ACW games: I have my eye on GMT’S Rebel Fury by Mark Herman. This is a division level game that comes with six battles - all supposedly playable in an evening. It looks really good. Rebel Fury is Volume I in the series. Volume II is titled: Army of the Potomac: Campaigns of 1862 and 1864.

GBoH давай! Ерунды на надо. В России любят GBoH Simple!

You may have already heard this a thousand times, but I recommended reading "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara. Its light reading (roughly 300-360 pages depending on the publisher) which covers the battle of Gettysburg.

This trilogy is epic! I could listen to Foote being interviewed forever! If you prefer audiobooks, Grover Gardner the Great does the narration for this trilogy, I highly recommend

You mentioned it, but Worthington's Civil War Brigade Series is my recommendation. I like it because it's not too complex, just a nice simple game I can get on the table and play. Gettysburg was delivered a couple of months ago and they've already finished the Kickstarter for the next battle in the series, Franklin 1864.