A few years ago, I succumbed to the dark side (not the Star Wars one). As a confirmed miniatures and Role Playing gamer of many, many years, I stuck my nose back into the long forgotten (by me) realm of board gaming.
I had always been intrigued by the “Heroes of Normandie” game from Devil Pig Games but a few things put me off.
It was expensive, partly because the weight, making freight for the core sets excessive (a multi kilo box of thick cardboard) and there was a lot of it.
It was also a translation from French and depending on the edition you bought was rife with typos and inconsistencies.
It was a hybrid miniatures-board game, which felt familiar and enticing, but also irrelevant on some level.
I came in late, missing some kick starter and older expansions and the longer I hesitated the worse that issue became (like X Wing 1e, like Attack Wing…).
I decided not to go the HoN avenue, but instead just dabble in a few (physically) lighter games with more limited and controllable expansion paths.
It started innocently enough. First the Black Hawk Down themed Lock N Load Tactical “Day of Heroes”, which lead to the Heroes of Nam, Falklands and WW2 expansions and most supporting materiel. These are all self contained, but used the same rules, so cross purchasing was an option not an imperative.
Not content.
I have since sold LnL on. It was the biggest investment in time and money, in a time where I want to get things done, not get stuck on one system. I also found the cost of some “necessary” upgrades off putting such as $35 for some bigger maps, that were not better than the originals, just bigger (and needed), then they released even better ones! If I had kept going, each single box (I had 7) would have topped out at over $200au (more than my actual HoN collection), with much of that being new maps making the previous 2 sets redundant and separate scenario generators that I think should have been in the box in the first place. I do however miss the modern themed games.
I then ordered the Base game and Stalingrad expansion for Old School Tactical, but had to wait over a year for the reprint of the expansion as again, I had waited too long (then they sent me two!). This was followed by the Western Europe set and expansions, which weigh in as the same class as the HoN games.
OST has also expanded into the Pacific, but I have held back for now, content with the first two volumes, but if they go in the direction of Italy….
Ed. This one has gone also.
The final system and probably the most sensible is Combat Commander, which is mechanically the best of the three (for me), but lacks tanks and is unplayable solo.
All of these have several things in common.
The counters are abstract in art style and counter colour in that they do not match the boards. People are silhouettes and in some games of this type even the vehicles are also. When you look at them you are looking at game counters, which from a miniature gamer’s perspective (even one with a memory that goes back to older board games) sit in an odd space between abstract simulation and just unrealistic. Vehicles especially, drawn side on at this scale (1:1 vehicles and sections of foot) just look odd to me and the benefit of the often beautiful “top down” boards is reduced by them.
HoN eventually wore me down as it probably was always going to.
Lesson learned was to get where you are going directly, not by other routes, as any other process is just wasted time and money. Convinced it filled a different theme (semi cartoonish and light weight) and with a cross-over to the Achtung Cthulhu RPG world, it held a connection that would not let go. Really I just wanted all of it’s lusciousness.
Some of the heavier bits were shipped locally, some from France direct (which was reasonably cheap in quantity) and some from the U.S with mixed freight costs and some other issues. After a long year of collecting I am there.
Thanks to Noble Knight Games I am now knocking on the door of a complete collection with extras. We will ignore for the moment the pending second edition that I do intend to ignore :), my collection now boasts the kick starter extras (Millers Rangers having the title of “dearest cardboard slab” in the house, but did come packaged with the Marquis and Steiner panels as well, I think erroneously), the Gazettes, all core games and expansions for HoN, Heroes of Stalingrad and Shadows Over Normandie (the Cthulhu-Horror connection).
This game has the distinction (as of 2018) of being in the top ten dearest board games available….go me… .
Is it worth it?
I think so, and here is why.
First up all of the problems with inconsistent rules and counter print errors have been addressed.
The Rules Compendium and later expansions with the inclusion of multiple cheap (0.01c) errata re-print counter sheets, have soothed frayed nerves. Many of the errata’d counters are only minor and many went un-noticed, but they still printed replacements. I must confess to buying a few more each order for extra Zombies, Rangers etc.
So, issues aside….
The game is beautiful, really beautiful.
The counters are all mini dioramas in their own right. The top down view infantry teams and vehicles match the stunning scenery perfectly and everything is to “modellers” scale (i.e. correct).
The Combat Commander counters are large and well drawn, but is there really any comparison? The HoN counters are also very cleanly cut and corner rounded. No ragged corners! I have a very few that are slightly off register, but because of their size, this is less bothersome than in other games. The counter above is about as busy as they get.
The scale is better.
The counters are pretty literal. Four figures are four figures. If the counter is reduced (flipped), there are fewer figures on the flip side. I prefer the teams scale also as it fits better with the scale of vehicles etc. and makes weapon teams equal to rifle teams. Where other games have a section sized counter and little weapon counters added, HoN counters are the weapon team. This also reduces the need for pesky morale rules (some are optionally available), as the fortunes of a small team tends to be more; healthy > reduced > dead, than the larger section sized unit; active > broken > dead dynamic.
The game has character and characters.
The main players in the game are usually historic figures or well known movie/TV characters (often one in the same). If history and fiction cross over they will use a likeness that is similar to both the historical figure and the actor that played them in the movie both old and new (John Frost > Antony Hopkins, Sean Connery > General Urquhardt etc, with appearances from Jude Law, Tom Hanks, John Wayne, Charles Bronson, Matt Damon, Clint Eastwood, Ed Harris, James Coburn, Ron Perlman-twice and many more). Even some characters from ‘Nam era fiction pop up in SoN like Robert Duvall’s mad Air-Cavalryman and a George Peppard like Ranger. Some are even the actual designers and friends. Some hinting is required for fictional characters (Private Bryan), but real people are named out.
Each character is strong, but not impervious, so things may still go pear-shaped on you if you play them badly. Each unit represents an actual unit and has characters to fit.
A Vanilla U.S. Airborne unit or the actual “Band of Brothers”, lots of options. The recruitment tiles above are used to create the forces in the game. I ignored them at first, but they really do make it easy to set up a game and make for realistically balanced forces.
The system is solid and surprisingly deep.
Simply put, it sits nicely in my sweet spot of realistic results without clutter and is elegant in play. I am always surprised how much they can do with a single d6 roll. Want to kill that Tiger with a Piat? Give it a go, because anything is possible, but expect to fail, because you should, it is a Tiger and you have a crappy Piat! They set up dramatic Hollywood moments, both heroic and tragic.
The activation system is also sufficiently “Hollywood”. A cat and mouse game in itself of blind activation allocation with a little bluff, but I have even played it with a different init system from one of my own WW2 miniature rule sets for a more traditional “Igo-Ugo” feel and it is flexible enough to allow aggressive tampering.
The blocks at the bottom (belonging to Lovecraftian Deep Ones in this case), are used to allocate activations and the matching dice are used for all tests. The cards add the events that make movies different from reality (or is reality that different?). The ill-fitting card sleeves are down to me. Each faction gets a card pack, themed to suit them.
The game is comprehensive.
Many vehicles and weapons from late war Europe and mid war Stalingrad or the SAS desert campaign as well as some weirdness from Shadows are present. Wittman’s Tiger or “Oddballs” M4, flame throwers (or worse), most infantry and support weapons are all there. It is actually more comprehensive than Lock N Load and Old School Tactical in that regard, especially in variety to counter load. The scale helps here. Instead of needing a half dozen of one vehicle at section scale, you only need a couple of tanks at team scale. There is even an armoured train complete with Goering.
The LRDG about to be ambushed.
The game feels different, more tactile.
The core counters are actually tiles an inch square and thick. A larger tank has a similar foot print to a credit card and even a single person counter is bigger than a tank in OST.
Everything you need to know is on the counters. One of the handy things about the substantial counter size is it allows the designers to put all relevant information on the counter in a pleasant and relatively invisible way. Even the terrain has movement and cover effects printed on it, in-offensively. No charts!
This brings us to the luscious boards and scenery.
The scenery can sit on the board, which would normally annoy me, but in this case a small house is 4-6” wide, so it sits with some presence. I have (gulp) over thirty double-sided boards (you only need 2-6 for a game). I can do desert, woods, hills, dungeons, evil labs, coastline with fortifications, rivers with multiple bridges, swamp, sewers, towns (demolished or not) and on and on. I even have a promo board form the Warhammer spin-off game, that adds a Nazi or Allied “secret base” desert tile. These can then be covered with more of the same! Below Devil Boys cave appears on your everyday Nazi cult-sacrifice clearing.
Counters for everything and all you need to know is on them. The trenches above show egress points, defensive values and terrain effects, all without ruining the ascetic.
The game is alive and it is a community.
Fan made content is common, feedback constant and their site has regular scenario ideas. They even put their work out for customer approval! Not long ago, the small company reached a crisis point, almost folding, but fans bailed it out. There is much love for this game.
Cross-over is relevant.
Achtung Cthulhu by Modophius has a unique style and plenty of established characters and SoN shares in that. I was lucky enough recently to pick up the original Achtung Cthulhu expansion that preceded Shadows. This completes my Mythos character and monster options, even a giant Cthulhu makes an appearance, but there is more. The system also has a super hero themed set of expansions from the “Guardian Chronicles”. A Hell Boy clone, a Captain America like character with a British offsider and even some more regular evil Nazi supernaturals (Zombies, Ghouls, Werewolves etc), so your weirdness can be accessed via other flavours of weird if Cthulhu is not your style. The only thing I have not collected is the “Dust Chronicles” expansion that adds German and American super soldiers with sci-fi weaponry.
Maybe one day.
A frikkin’ sleep walker!
Engagement is very strong.
The game has a semi role playing feel. I often set up a game like an RPG scenario and play as the GM. The feel is movie orientated and it comes through so well. It is actually hard to play it too straight because the games character forces it’s way through regardless.
Recently a friend was tasked with the extraction of an enemy scientist from a lab somewhere in France. The scientist in question was working on a potion that animates the dead, and it was working, possibly too well. The player entered the game with a platoon of Rangers through an eerily deserted village, thinking it was a semi pulp WW2 scenario, then discovered he was in an episode of the Walking Dead meets Saving Private Ryan!. Much fun was had, especially when his men started going mad. He won, but I can only assume everyone involved would never be the same.
Like a scene from a “Boys own Adventures” book, but it is still fully compatible with the WW2 action around it. There are even spell books.
Play it normally, weird or any combination that suits, this game will reward you with engaging fun and rewarding play. Next is to get my wife playing!