From: mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board
Subject: Re: SPQR / GREAT BATTLES OF ALEXANDER
Date: 28 Jul 92 14:00:44 GMT
Organization: DB and ES Subdivision, TU Vienna

From article <1992Jul28.121707.25450@unlinfo.unl.edu>, by ganderso@unlinfo.unl.edu (gary anderson):
> I've been noticing GMT's recently-released SPQR and the mate-able
> GREAT BATTLES OF ALEXANDER (both designed and/or developed,
> interestingly enough, by Richard Berg).  

Great Battles of Alexander was the original game, and SPQR is the
sequel.  There is also a variant kit for GBOA, called "Juggernaut", I
think about the battle of the Hydaspes, against the Indians under
Porus, available directly from GMT.  I don't know about SPQR; GBOA was
designed by Mark Herman and developed by Richard Berg.

Of the three, I've played GBOA, had high hopes for it, and was
severely disappointed (more below).  The game leans heavily on three
concepts: Troop Quality (i.e., how much pressure, losses or bad
terrain can a unit withstand before it falls apart), combined arms
(strong emphasis on capabilities of differently-equipped units), and
leaders.  On the whole, unit type interplay and the importance of
flanking comes out very well, and it does give you an impression of
how these battles worked historically.  The designer's notes
(including extensive annotated bibliography) have a quite
condescending tone, you can just feel the weight of two thousand years
of hindsight behind them.  Apart from that, they're excellent.

As for playing it, it's a nice, smooth flowing system that yields the
historical results, i.e., Alexander walks over his opponents and
usually you can't do a lot about it.  It is even acknowledged in the
rules that except for Arbela, the non-Macedonians don't stand much of
a chance in the scenarios.  Not only are the Macedonians superior in
troop quality (which is much more important than size in the system),
they have much better leaders (with quality of subordinate leader
being incorporated into leader values, which is what gives Philip a
command range of more than a kilometer), while the other side is
pretty much straitjacketed by the command system, and does not get
beyond reacting locally.  The main problem with this is that this is
not accounted for this in the game's victory conditions, which for all
battles amount to "if your army routs, you lose".  Big deal.  If in
most cases the Macedonians are going to rout you anyway (the Persians
usually have the larger army, but their units rout easier, and their
army rout limits tend to be lower as well, so you can't really fight
battles of attrition), you simply lack a yardstick for how well you
did.  I'm inclined to call this the Mark Herman Syndrome, since he did
it this way in Pacific War, too.  After playing the Chaeronea scenario
in GBOA, the friend whom I played with commented that a fun game is
the result of trying to improve upon history, not simply repeating it
(note that he played the Macedonians).

Summary: A great simulation, possibly fun in solitaire play, forget it
as a competitive game.  I've been told there are three
scenarios/setups among the roughly ten provided that do give the
Persians a fighting chance, but I've not felt enticed to hunt them
out: On one hand, the lack of interest in making this otherwise
extremely well-developed simulation into an interesting game left me
simply disgusted.  On the other hand, watching a huge lumbering army
being cut apart by your opponent's surgical strikes, while you hope a
failed trump roll or wounded Alexander will give you a chance to do
something beyond local firefighting was not to my taste.


-- 
Markus Stumptner                                mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
University of Technology Vienna                 vexpert!mst@relay.eu.net
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria             ...mcsun!vexpert!mst