I am having a clear out. My gaming is minimal, but my collection huge, so time for a reduction.

Some of the targeted games are ones that, up until now, have seemed to be safely placed on their shelf, patiently waiting for their day in the sun, but the reality is, that day may never come, so out they go to homes that will appreciate them.

One of these is Old School Tactical (1&2 and 3 expansions).

This was the labour of two frustrating years waiting for the Stalingrad expansion to be reprinted, but truth be told, I had mentally moved on and when I got the Heroes of Normandie and Combat Commander expansions for Stalingrad at about the same time (the year of Stallingrad!), I felt I had enough ways of playing that campaign.

Lock and Load Tactical has already gone (I do miss the modern elements of that one), so my WW2 board game systems have been more than halved and it feels right.

There is one over riding reason for this, Heroes of Nromandie.

The game is all three of my gaming interests in one.

It is by definition a board game.

It is a conventional board game using counters and scenery panels for play.

For counters, you get something closer to tiles than the usual thin card counters, with the largest measuring over 3 inches long and the smallest still being a decent counter size. As with boards, i can field any major European protagonist’s forces, including Horror, Superhero and “Strange” types, both historical and ficticious (or a little of both).

I have in my nearly (effectively) complete collection, over thirty double sided panels and dozens of overlay scenery elements, needing only two or more to make a game. I can do anything apart from Jungle (do have swamps though), including ancient temples, bridges, entire villages, coast lines, rivers and a train track.

It is a tabletop wargame.

The game looks and plays like a very nice table top war game. the tiles are similar in size to actual table top element bases and could easily be used as such. Conversely, it would not be at all hard to make a table top game with these rules, using base widths as measurement units. It is fast and simple, but holds together as a game both tactically and mechanically and has tons of room to modify rules to suit game style.

Unlike a lot of semi-role playing games such as Zombicide or Nemesis, using beautiful, but unpainted miniatures, these come “pre-painted”, perfectly matching with the art of their boards and the game overall.

It is a decent role playing game substitute.

The game actually does have an RPG connection through Achtung Cthulhu, a WW2 Cthulhu spin-off, sharing the same characters and story connections, so this is not a stretch at all.

I regularly set up a game from a GM’s perspective, playing the player or players against the game/scenario, not player vs player.

The characters, the feel and story driven dynamic of the game lends itself to this style of play. Plenty of other games like this (like the three previousy mentioned) have “named” leader characters and similar unit dynamics, but the calling out of specific characters with back story, the level of art and the smaller scale of this game lends itself to real role playing scenarios. The player can really play the leader of their paratroop platoon, rather than just a godlike overseer of overall proceedings.

There is a real feeling of freedom with this game, creative playfulness even. No dry “must be done this way” rules, no inflexible systems or tables. You want to immerse yourself in this game. This promotes scenario driven play such as getting the villagers out, stopping the cult from completing its ritual or capturing the mad scientist. The game’s mechanics get out of the way fo the game play.

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Lastly, it is easy to teach and appeals to non wargamers.

Most people can identify with a classic war movie or series, so directly equating a known character or unit with the counters on the board somehow reduces the seriousness of the game and increases player involvement. It helps make it just a game, but also a fully paid into experience.

Everything you need to know is on the counter or the board. No tables, no charts, no mathletics. All you need is to know about the counter is on the counter, so a little looking up is needed early but the counter prompts this, so no finding out at the end you could have done “x” and changed the tide of the game.

I can honestly say that if I could only have one game, this would be it. Accumulating all of it required a lot of perserverence and luck and not a small financial outlay, not helped by my futile and misguided attempts to distract myself by getting the other systems mentioned*, but so have plenty of other games that do not provide the same level of satisfaction.

The collection I have now has almost everything printed for edition one (The Dust Tactics expansion eludes me) and I have no intention of dipping my toe into second edition, considering this to be a good end point.

I will keep Combat Commander also as it also took a lot of getting, is different in play and feel, has a small footprint and I like its comprehensive nature adding the Pacific theatre and more of Africa.

*Similar to my equally futile attempts to avoid X-Wing by getting everything but, then getting it anyway.