In which our hero remembers what fiction is

So, we like to joke that I am essentially illiterate. Not that I can't read, or that I don't, because I actually do read quite a lot. Rather it is The case that I partake of nothing resembling literature. For what it's worth, I simply am more compelled by non-fiction - and as a science fanboy you can be sure to find me daily with something along the lines of Pinker, Dawkins, or Diamond queued up on my Kindle.

This, however, was not always my sorry state of affairs. Long ago, when I was far less obsessed with reality, I was an equally-voracious sci-fi reader. The point of all of this biographical grandstanding being that one of the books I read as a teenager was a collection of David Drake's Hammer's Slammers short stories.

Turns out that all these years later, the Slammers are a pretty well-served gaming property, with the glossy new edition of Hammer's Slammers: The Crucible at it's heart.

To be honest, it took me a long time to finally pull the trigger on picking these rules up. Despite a very favorable review on Meeples and Miniatures, lots of positive chatter on TMP, and a website with some of the best eyecandy around, the final decision to buy was not easy.

First off, I just wasn't sure what kind of game was hiding in that book. Reviews typically lingered on how beautiful the book is, how much Slammers world background they included, but other than some vague positives, actual discussion of the game mechanics was nearly impossible to find.

This uncertainty, combined with the high price, in the neighborhood of fifty dollars, left me pretty hesitant to buy.

Eventually, though, I could resist no longer.

And so, book in hand, I can say that it's a pretty good armor-on-armor game, and the book itself is straight up tank porn.

I can see why few reviewers can get too far past the book's aesthetics. The full color pages are jammed with photos and illustrations. Pretty much every page has something to stare lustfully at. The models photographed for the book are all big 28mm pieces, most painted by Kevin Dallimore, who is far too talented, and are shot among some wonderful scenics. The eye candy in this thing stands up with any of the biggest names in the mini biz, and surpasses many. The thing can almost pass for a coffee table book.

And lest I be guilty of penning another drooling review with no mention of mechanics, it has a pretty fun game mixed in with the pretty pictures.

First off, know what you getting. Crucible is a light, tank-on-tank game, and unapologetically so. It is not a deeply technical armor sim with lots of penetration charts nor is it a game that is rooted in the lessons of contemporary conflicts. The Drake stories are rooted in cold war-era conflicts recast in iridium hovertanks, and this game has that feel. This is a game about blowers, and the MBT's are the kings of the table, swift, deadly, and stout. All of which make for a game that is flat-out fun, uncomplicated, and purposeful.

The mechanics are slim and (usually) efficient. Units are activated in detachments, of which a player will control one or more of, depending on the game size, and the order is determined each turn by a combination of base leadership added to a die roll.

Once order is sorted, players roll again to see how many command points the active detachment has for the turn. These are mainly used for movement and are modified by leader quality and casualties. I like this mechanic, as it adds some random chaos to the way battles unfold as a point-starved or poor leader, or a hot streak can have a real effect on how units scurry about the table. A good commander with a small detachment, though, will usually have little pressure to deal with, though, which is probably accurate, but can be less fun (all the more reason to avoid the superhuman fluff character optional rules).

After the tanks have rolled around a bit, it's time to blow something up. For a game that is otherwise very light and abstract, the four-step shooting process does feel a bit drawn out. Still, compared to the calculus exams buried in many armor games, it's easy fare that builds dramatically to completion rather than getting mired in figures and cross-referencing.

After everyone has wrapped-up direct fire and the blowers have left smoking piles of molten goo all around them, missiles and indirect fire are resolved, troops roll to remove suppression and so forth and then the whole process starts back up from the top, to under-describe the whole thing, but still say more than I usually find, which makes this a public service of sorts.

Generally, there's just enough flavor and detail to just barely miss the beer & pretzels label, but not so much detail to cast the game in the simulationist mold either. It's fun, flows reasonably well, and gives treadheads the kind of outcomes they probably wanted even if they didn't get to argue about points of fiddly minutia while doing so.

Ultimately, though, the game does need to thoughtfully brought to the table. While there are points, this is not an army-list, balanced force game. Not all tanks are created equally - the front three-quarters of the blowers are almost impervious to anything below their lofty station, and combat cars can spend all night rattling small arms fire off one another. Players need to be sure the scenario design and force composition are in place to produce an enjoyable game - a bring'n'battle could be ugly.

I doubt I will suddenly redirect my mini buying to include forces specifically from the Drake universe, but there is little other than the effort of hacking some unit cards between my current collection and these rules. The sample units are fairly comprehensive and a fair template can be found for most. I do wish there was a true pointing system available, both to aid in integrating non-Slammers miniatures and for balancing pickup games, but I wouldn't be shocked to see something of the sort appear in the community at some point either.

In the end, waiting seems to have been pointless. I like gaming tanks, I like light game mechanics, and I like drool-worthy pictures. When you get all three, seems to have been worth the money afterall. This is a game I will play a lot.

In which our hero receives packages from far and wide

Ok, I have had more than a few orders pop up over the last two weeks, so I am going to give some rapid-fire reviews here just to get them out. Might not be any pics, but I am not all that fond of the bare metal photos anyway to be honest, and was mulling over doing less of those anyway - it's rare my contribution is better than what's on the originators' websites after all.

Anyway...

I got in a pretty good-sized order from Khurasan with a variety of things in it. First, I got three of the big Felid transports. I am actually going to use these are assault transports for the GZG (space ork) alien mercs. The big trucks have an orky vibe anyway, and once I get them loaded doen with random stowage and a nice rusty paintjob they'll be absolutely perfect.

I got some Felids too, despite repurposing their designated vehicles. I am going to be using the Khurasan Cafaretta transports and their gun carriage cousins for the Felids. The Felid minis themselves are really nice. A bit on the bigger side, but that fits their concept very well, and they're definitely not anywhere near out of scale. I might have to snip some bases to get them on the 5/8" washers I've been using for infantry, though. The poses are what I like - they're not static, but also not frozen in some awkward pose. The armor is excellent, I like the angular armor, something you don't see all the time.

As for the Cafaretta series vehicles, these things are among my favorite scifi designs. I love the idea of a dual-mode hover transport, still able to use wheels for fuel savings and practicality, but launching into lift mode for fast attack above terrain complications. Makes for a very flexible force. The design itself is a bit derivative of the Aliens dropship, but that's not a bad thing. All in all, the abundance of rivets and a set of really nice lines makes it just look fantastic. I picked up the transports pretty early in my buying process and it took me a little while to settle on just which infantry force would get to use them, but there was never a point at which they were not going to figure into my plans. With the recent release of the Hunter gun carriage variants, I am even relieved of the uncertainty of what additional vehicles I would need to flesh out a full force. The Hunters' trio of armaments cover a variety of roles and provide a full set of options for a light vehicle force. The aspect of the new hunters I do find confusing, however, is the way that Khurasan has decided to package them. The kit includes all three payloads, but only one mounting bracket. You can, however, buy additional mounting brackets for a buck. Where this strikes me as odd is that it is a waste of metal and certainly is costing both Khurasan and the buyer more in the process. If you want the buyer to be able to build a swappable kit, include extra cradles. If you expect them to only build one, sell the vehicle with a single payload and make the payload+bracket an optional purchase. It just seems like the least efficient option.

Not done with Khurasan yet, I also went in for a Space Demon (Giger Alien)  force, or the start of one anyway. I still need to sort out thee guys from a gaming standpoint - there's not a very good army list for them in ASQL, as hive mind isn't quite right and none of the others are even close - but they're just too neat and too ubiquitous in the genre to pass up for long. I really like the Prince models, with their back crests and the hammerheads are a nice addition to the xenomorph concept. I need to come up with a non-black paint scheme, though, The canonical approach is so redundant at this point. I've seen the models painted red to good effect. I am thinking of a sepia/chestnut over salmon scheme right now, sort of an extreme fleshtone.

Needing some distinctly-scifi primitives to fill out some ASQL armies, I ordered in a few dozen Micropanzer Swarm Alien packs. These are well-intentioned figures. Unmistakably alien, with a definite hat-tip to District 9's extraterrestrials among others, they're exactly what I wanted for ASQL - primitive troops that can't be mistaken for figures poached from a fantasy line. They won't harsh your scifi buzz. The figures themselves, though excellent in concept have a couple of blemishes. First, the legs are really fragile. While the spindly appearance makes the concept work, the thin joints can bend and break much to easily. While I didn't get any broken ones in my order, I did manage to break a couple while shoving some bent ones into place. It's fixable, but you are going to have to go easy on these guys. They're also kind of big. For whatever reason, I wanted them to be a bit diminutive rather than imposing. That's not Micropanzer's fault, just my aesthetic. Still, as melee troops, a bit of hulking isn't a bad thing. I figure on painting them up a bit like cockroaches and sending them to war as the cheap cannonfodder in front of the space orc mercs as an ASQL Alien Imperial army.

The third shipment (or third and fourth, actually) is a force I wasn't really planning to do until I saw some models I couldn't resist - the Heavy Gear Trooper and Recon Drones. There is just something irresistible about them. I wasn't sure when I ordered them if they would be big enough to pass as a vehicle of some sort, but was not above using them as droids if not. Envisioning an Eastern Bloc industrial aesthetic, and knowing that if they could pass as vehicles I would need some really short drivers, I chose to mate these with the Rebel Minis Sons of Thunder. Together these form the core of a machine cult or industrial combine alien force, and with some green-grey paint accented with red stripes here and there should look very nice together. Once I got the metal in-hand, I found the drones to be right at the very edge of being plausibly driven by a Son of Thunder pilot, but it is not out of the question. A moot point in the end, however, as I have more or less decided that these will be a very nice option for an ASQL Mechanical army - the squat infantry being sufficiently robotic in character and fully-augmented to be indistinguishable from an all-machine force. As an excuse to get the HG drones, this works fine. I do, however, still need to sort out some more assets for the army, or else they will be relegated to being either only usable for small games or only having light units and infantry. I think I can make something out of the Heavy Gear Naga Strider, with a sculpted nose that more closely matches the tall bubble motif of the drones, this should serve well as a heavy mecha/MBT unit, albeit an expensive one.

I have way too much stuff all ready.

But there's never enough, is there?

I already have another core army incoming from GZG, and want to add some more primitives in the form of Khurasan Plutonians and some Hydra Minis plant people. On top of that I really want to build a pharaonic alien army based around Critical Mass Games' Protolenes, Old Crow's Alien armor, and GZG's not-Stargate aliens. And buy more of everything, and a pony. And, and, and.

I have a problem.

In which our hero gives a progress report

It's been pretty busy of late, but I am still squeezing in a little time here and there for the aforementioned hobbies. Mostly I have been getting to do little bits of paint here and there. It's rarely a lot of progress on any given night, but added up over weeks, it becomes something.

I am presently about two-thirds of the way through painting my first two hundred-point ASQL forces. Here is the Commonwealth Expeditionary Force (Human Imperial), with Khurasan Federal army infantry and Ground Zero grav-sled IFV's.

and here are the "Worms" (Alien Strike Force), with Critical Mass Games' Astagar mercs and Topgun grav APC's.

Each needs another vehicle and six more infantry to finish the initial build, my short-term goal being to finish the 100-point ASQL rosters for the half dozen or so armies I have already invested in models for. While I have bought entirely more miniatures than will be needed for these armies, it is still a realistic objective that'll give me playable forces and lots of variety before going off and trying to gear up for Ogre-scale forces with dozen of vehicles. These 100-point groups will also be well and over anything I would need for any skirmish-level gaming as well.

I have also taken a first stab at getting some scenery sorted, with a trio of small cover pieces.

The middle one, clearly, is finished and the other two are in need of paint. I am Trying to do most of my terrain as 2-inch squares. This will let me use them with both a 4-inch hex mat and a 2-inch skirmish setup. On the big battle mat the hexes will have a single terrain type, with a few small pieces indicating which, but still allowing for reshuffling to fit models. On a 2-inch skirmish board, they will fill the hex, so I need to keep space open for figures to sit in, etc. I can make some that are 2x4, or 2x8, but this will work in either case.

I need to make a lot more. And some trees, hills, rocks, etc. Oy.

I do seem to have some issues with the autofocus on my camera - in combination with the macro it doesn't do a good job of getting the full field in focus. I will have to figure this out. Still doing better than the iPhone camera was giving me anyway.

In which our hero receives a package from Old Crow

So, I was out of town for a few days and came home to find a few packages piled up on the doorstep. After marveling at the neighborhood kids' lack of ambition, I set to the task of cracking them open.

First up was the parcel from Old Crow.

I had placed an exploratory order for some vehicles that I thought would compliment my Rebel Minis Titan Marines (the jackbooted Siedler Landwehr as they are known locally). The Old Crow Dragoon halftrack and Goanna scout both echo the Sd Kfz transports and armored cars of WWII, and evoke just the right vibe for my despicable, predictable, and derivative bad guy army.

Here's the Goanna. It's actually a little bigger than I expected, and altogether cool.

The models themselves are fantastic. Clean casts in a very nice resin, with very few bubbles or pits to deal with. Surface details are sharp and the pieces have a definite and clear artistic direction.

Here's the Dragoon as parts.

And a shot of it assembled, which took all of five minutes. The bits fit together perfectly.

I do need to figure out how I am going to arm the Goannas. They don't come with any weapons, but do have plenty of roof deck for adding some sort of turret. I am going to have to start pawing around and see if I can get any Sd Kfz machine gun turrets separate from the rest of the model, as these would be perfect. Failing that, I may just kitbash something from my growing pool of bits, but they deserve a finishing touch that's at least up to the standard of the rest of the model. I may do some sort of fixed-forward gun blister on the hood instead of a turret to keep them sleek, or skip the obvious armaments all together and keep them as-is. Experiments are in order.

Now I just need to find some more vehicle that fit the vibe. I'm yet to stumble upon any near future tanks that really scream 'Panzer III knockoff,' nor can I find any good Stug standins. Old Crow's Sabre isn't terribly far off, though it's still more Abrams than Panther. I am also tossing around the idea of incorporating some Gear Krieg walkers into the force.

In which our hero thinks aloud regarding the shrubbery

Miniatures? Check.
Rules? Check.
Terrain? Oh bugger.
I've been ignoring a pretty important part of the gaming equation so far, the tabletop and its scenics. Not to say that it hasn't been rattling around my brain, but I certainly have not been oblivious to it. Rather, I spend a lot of time thinking about the game board and the lack of action on the point is due more to paralyzation in the face of too many options than short-sightedness.
Here are a few of the conflicts I am up against...
Size.
My dining room table is 54" x 54" and it is remarkably unlikely that I will play any game anywhere else anytime soon. This puts an easy ceiling on the size of my gaming space right away, and this is certainly plenty of space for the kinds of games I want to play - in fact, for what I am working on right now I can squeeze down quite a bit.
But do I want to commit to a size at all? Deciding to use a 3x3 or 4x4 surface means losing or at least marginalizing other options. What is more, I am at cross purposes with myself - I would like to play both skirmishes and battles, and they are best served at different sizes. It is likely that if I commit to a base surface, then, that I will need to either get something that is modular, get two mats, or just play in a corner of a larger mat much as I would play in subsections of an undressed table if I skipped the base surface all together.
Material.
The options when it comes to the composition of the gaming surface are legion. Giving just the most likely choices produces the list: nothing, cloth mat, rubber mat, large tiles, and meaningful hexes. Not one of these is sufficiently superior to the others to trivialize the choice, though there is a huge difference in effort in getting the surface ready to play, more or less in the order listed. Four-inch hexes are something I am very interested in, given that they combine both a high degree of customization, but also the ability to do hex-based gaming, which with the decades of Battletech and Ogre behind me feels so right. Meanwhile, the Zuzzy rubber mats look very cool, but require painting, the Hotz felt mats are pre-finished but don't come in sizes that appeal to me, and the table is, well, just the table.
Modularity.
Some of the very first miniatures gaming I ever did at assorted conventions as an adolescent was on tables loaded down with Geo-Hex. First impressions being what they are, the notion of piecing together a board with smaller segments has been a constant desire in my gaming life. I have used wooden and foam squares of various sizes, I've got a decent GHQ Terrainmaker project for modern microarmor up in the attic. I even tried a scheme with self-adhesive floor tiles that almost worked. Despite, or perhaps due to this fondness for modular terrain I am increasingly unlikely to dive into it again. I just know from experience what kind of cost and time investments are involved, and how hard it is to be on the right side of the crap:quality outcome. I think that at this stage in life, I am willing to trade the ability to sculpt the layout of a battlefield for the ability to get it on the table quickly and easily.
Universality goes with modularity and must be considered. While I am only doing 15mm sci-fi right now, that doesn't mean I will never play another period. The ability to reuse the majority of the terrain in various guises is highly desirable. While the to-scale and to-period pieces on the table will be specific, I do expect that a base terrain which works well for sci-fi rockballs should serve well enough for other projects ranging from Back of Beyond to WWII Africa to Hellenistic ancients. It will certainly be less jarring than all those 40k games we used to play with my fantasy battle scenics.
Expense.
While my threshold of pain as far as the price tag of a scenery solution goes is not as low as it once was, I still have no desire to sacrifice too much of what could be spent on figures on scenery instead. At the same time, I want scenery which is at least as attractive as the miniatures I am putting on it. Given that my painting is just above average, that becomes my target. Getting there will cost a few bucks, but less than I have spent on miniatures for the 15mm project to date. For once, it seems, expense is the least weighty variable in a new project, which must say something about how old I am getting.
Practicality.
The wet blanket factors are many. It must store well, it must set up and tear down fast, and it can't be messy. It's hard to ever be driven by reasonable and rational choices when you are a grown man playing with toys, but it's got to be in there somewhere - how well I do so remains to be seen.
It must be said, one reason Bloodbowl is so easy to love is that you don't have to fiddle with terrain. Yet some do. Go figure.
Every clear-thinking neuron (that would be seven, for the record) says to just build some scenics and play on the bare table, but when do I ever live up to the logic and reason I aspire to?
The conflict-avoiding compromiser in me will negotiate up to a game mat, but only if it rolls up and doesn't shed, but he's a pushover after all, so we can probably get more.
The engineer that lives in my head wants something modular and comprehensive, and really likes to huff styrofoam hexes if rumors are true.
The pushy aesthete wants to go way overboard on the whole project. That guy always bites off more than he can chew and leaves a wasteland of unfinished projects in his wake.
So, where am I at right now? I really don't want to use a bare table, but I also don't want to do hexes (not as the base surface anyway). I don't want to have to cut or paint to excess either.
What I like the idea of right now is getting a 4x6 Hotz mat with hexes, but without craters which I will cut down to a square (more or less as the hexes fall), using the remainder to make hills by gluing hex cutouts to the top of Terrainmaker hexes, and perhaps even having enough for a 2x2 skirmish board as well.
I am not going to worry about comprehensive scenic details off the mark - I can get by with just some buildings, some rocky outcrops, and some roads. Trees, rivers, shrubs, and the lit can come later, if at all.
To that end, I do have a mess of Plastruct sheets, rods, and tubes and have gotten a bit of a go on some small colonial shanty buildings and ruins, all of which will be useful no matter what decisions I make about the overall terrain project.
TL:DR version - Phil spends a lot of time and money on pretendy planet but not as much as he probably could have.

In which our heros shows off some Astagar

Today's transparent cry for attention is a few of the Critical Mass Games Astagar Mercs that I am presently plugging away at.

The blue is a bit vivid under the flash. Truth be told, it's a bit vivid all the time, but I wanted them to stand out a bit. They're fearless space pirates, raiding frontier systems and stripping them of anything useful, so subtlety is not really the point. Still, they could probably use another dark wash just to dim the lights a bit.

To follow up on my previous ramble about how to base them, I wound up forcing them onto a 5/8" washer. You can see a step-by-step for how to do this easy and with a fairly low breakage rate - the steps being to first cut away the area under the raised coil in the middle of the base. Next, bend the tail carefully about 90 degrees, then glue the critter to the base. Trying to cut the tail from the base where it touches the ground nearest the end didn't work out too well when I tried that approach.

I suspect I am going to wind up greenstuffing a few extra uniform details onto the remainder of these guys - at least some shoulderpads and helmets on most, mainly just because I like the way the armor details look on the pieces that have them.

All in all, I like these guys. They're definitively alien, but still fit in well with the other stuff I have going on around the table.

In which our hero judges books by their covers

So, now that I have minis, I need a game to play, or three.

While the generic nature of the 15mm SciFi miniatures scene has the advantage of being liberated from specific systems and restrictions, an embarrassment of freedom is the difficulty in settling on a set of rules.

But after much intertubes and skimming books, I seem to have narrowed the field down to three games that I will probably actually bother playing.

The first set of rules I splashed for was the .pdf pre-release of Tomorrow's War from Ambush Alley Games. This game gets great press and enthusiastic reviews everywhere, thanks mainly to the near-universal fondness for AAG's previous titles, Ambush Alley (rules for contemporary asymmetrical fights), and Force on Force (small, symmetrical fights anywhere in the last century or so). I had also heard the creators interviewed on the Meeples and Miniatures podcast (I am addicted to podcasts, listening to Stuff You Should Know as I type this), and I liked their vibe.

All of which is to justify spending 20 bucks on a .pdf file. Or two actually since I got the bundle with TW and FoF, as the pre-release version on TW is a bolt-on rather than a full game.

Still, I expected a great game, and a great game is worth it, and to be honest, with an iPad, a .pdf rulebook isn't bad.

So, is it a great game? Yeah, it is, but I won't play it a lot.

To explain, I typically prefer games with high levels of abstraction, very simple mechanics, and a firm tilt toward the game side of the game:simulation continuum. Not that I don't enjoy a good realistic game too, but I am for better or worse a member of the beer & pretzels crowd when I am playing with other people and looking for something without a deep tactical detail when playing solo.

TW is a fairly detailed, reality-grounded game. The mechanic are excellent and interesting, but nine times out of ten, it just isn't the game I want to play, which is entirely my fault, because it is a very good game and I look forward to enjoying it when it is the game I want to play. FoF has definitely made a return to WWII gaming more possible in the future, given how much I disliked Flames of War and how much better FoF would be for the period, and will definitely be in the mix for any game I play set in the 20th century.

As a fistfull of dice aficionado, I really like the core mechanic of TW/FoF, which boils down to the attacker and defender rolling a dice for each model in the fight and matching up results. Combined with the use of multiple types of die for different quality troops (d6, d8, etc) this basic system is both surprisingly effective and just plain fun. The tendency of firefights to degenerate into confusing webs of reaction fire is probably my one real complaint with the game - while this system is at the heart of the realistic outcome of the game, it can be a bit much on a crowded table and is not fun to negotiate in solo play in particular, where some of the 'F you' charm of reaction fire is lost.

The next candidate was 15mm.co.uk's Alien Squad Leader. A game with massed basing, claiming to mix the best of DBA and Warmaster and espousing a pulp ethic - pretty much catnip to Our Hero. And stylized abstraction is something ASL delivers on, along with a set of excellent army lists, and a good bit of unapologetic fun.

As mechanics go, the movement, spotting, and shooting systems are all pretty standard fare. The mechanical highlight for me is a command system reminiscent of Warmaster, which is still one of my favorite game mechanics ever. Driving the game with the command roll mechanic is a good way to inject random chance and tactical foresight simultaneously, and the sudden shortened turn or impossible but critical success enliven the table every time.

While the game mechanics are understated but effective, the heavy lifting of the game's design seems to be in the 14 army lists included in the book. The flavor which isn't overly-developed in the rules to differentiate forces is instead lavished on the force selection guidelines, in their variety of units available as well as their few special rules which are nowhere near as heavy-handed as the force-specific rules in, for instance, Flames of War.

An interesting aspect of these lists which makes ASL look different on the gaming table are the large number of archaic, primitive, and feral units used as auxiliaries and cannon fodder by many of the armies profiled. These options are a welcome change of pace over the ubiquitous Halo-esque troopers that make up the force lists of most games.

As much as this bit of color excites me, there really is a paucity of SciFi-specific primitives and beasts on the market. Historical ranges can yield up lots of colorful troops, as with fantasy ranges obviously, but they will always look like a stand of fantasy elves or zouaves even if you paint their skin blue. Khurassan notably does make a number of pulp and SciFi creatures to fill these roles, and kudos to them for doing so.

The third system I picked up, almost as an impulse buy when ordering ASL, was USEME from 15mm.co.uk. While the handful of reviews of this system (whose name is an acronym for Ultra Simple Engine for Miniatures Engagements) were positive, I was skeptical that a game which was designed to be completely generic and very brief simply wouldn't convey much army character or mechanical novelty. Ultra-basic generic systems are an old standard in gaming, and few are wildly popular, though a handful, like DBA are. Given that the game was about six bucks, I figured it was worth a try anyway.

USEME is pretty much what I expected it to be, and for that reason, or perhaps despite that, it is the game I more likely to use for skirmish games over TW. The mechanics are thin but effective, stylized but not unbalanced, and yield a well-worthwhile game. There is very little to differentiate forces but what is available, chiefly the elan score and varied move rates chosen in initial force construction can yield two forces with core troops that play very differently and can model a number of concepts very well. While a player could simply construct a force that will min-max these option for tactical effect, players with a more purposeful objective can produce a surprisingly specific theme for their force through subtle profile sculpting.

As a long-time evangelist for simple games, USEME is a game I would point to as a success. It produces a fun and fair fight and rewards purposeful force design. Certainly it is not going to be a detailed, gritty, game which integrates many minutia taken as a requisite by many games, but if you want to play a quick, casual game with small-to-medium forces, it is an excellent choice.