Paru ces dernières semaines chez Victory Point Games, Cuba: The Splendid Little War, Sign of the Pagan et Paul Koenig’s The Bulge: 6th Panzer Army sont trois petits wargames facile d’accès simulant respectivement et d’une part à l’échelle stratégique les évènements de la troisième guerre d’indépendance qui opposa l’empire espagnol aux rebelles cubains entre 1895 et 1898, d’autre part à l’échelle tactique la Bataille des champs Catalauniques entre Attila et l’empire romain en 451 AD, puis enfin à l’échelle opérationnelle les combats entre les américains et la 6ème armée blindée allemande dans les Ardennes en 1944.
A noter aussi mais dans un registre très différent, mêlant boxe et jeu de plateau, la sortie de Knockout. Ainsi que celle de Dawgs of War, un autre petit jeu de plateau au style satirique sur les combats aériens durant la Grande guerre.
Voyez les communiqués ci-après pour quelques précisions supplémentaires ou cliquez sur les images ci-dessous pour accéder à la fiche de chaque jeu sur le site de l’éditeur.
Communiqués
Cuba: The Splendid Little War, from designer Javier Garcia de Gabiola, is a two-player simulation of the third War of Cuban Independence (1895-1898). One player controls the forces of the Spanish colonial government, fighting to retain Cuba; the other player controls the Cuban rebels fighting for their independence. Gameplay represents the main insurgency and counterinsurgency operations that took place, and players must make key strategic decisions to achieve their objectives while balancing their resources and preventing their opponent from doing the same.
There are event cards that help and hinder both players; disease, ambushes, assassinations, and the reactions of the American press and government. Steamships, railroads, telegraphs were all common, but there were no radios, almost no automobiles, and no airplanes. Newspapers and magazines were the cutting edge of media, so print was “king.”
As the Spanish player, can you maintain control of the island, keep the economy going (based on sugarcane plantations) and keep the U.S. out of the fight? Or, as the Cubans, can you stop the Spanish efforts and gain your independence? Play Cuba: The Splendid Little War and find out!
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Sign of the Pagan from Richard Berg portrays the most famous battle of one of history’s most feared figures – Attila the Hun. It is considered by some to be the battle that saved Western Europe from the Huns and, for the most part, put an end to Attila’s wide-sweeping drives for loot.
The Battle of the Catalaunian Fields was fought as the age of the Roman West faded away and the Dark Ages began. As Attila’s Huns and their Germanic barbarian allies moved into Western Europe, leaving a trail of pillage and destruction behind and threats of more violence to come, the remnants of the Western Roman Empire joined with their former enemies, the mighty Visigoth tribe, to stop the deadly invasion.
The two coalitions squared off in battle in the summer of 451 A.D. in what is now central France. The result entered both history and mythic folklore, as one of the last armies of the Roman Empire stood in common cause with their bitter Gothic rivals to defend their lands and their peoples from the marauding terror of the Huns.
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After storming the beaches in his D-Day series, and fresh from air landing in his Market-Garden series, designer Paul Koenig invites you to collect another World War II European Tour travel sticker, this time from the first 3½ days of the German 1944 winter offensive known as “The Battle of the Bulge.”
In this first game of a new series, 6th Panzer Army takes you to the northern sector of this famous salient where Allied forces grimly confronted a winter onslaught by Hitler’s vaunted Panzers in the rugged Ardennes Forest. As a player, you must command your German or Allied forces so as to capture the objectives on the board while keeping your casualties down (and your opponent’s casualties high).
Using a fresh take on the venerable wargaming system presented in the D-Day and Market-Garden series, Battle of the Bulge authority and game developer Randy Heller has brought Paul’s system up in scale to handle the larger operations in this campaign and provides the great (but manageable!) gaming “chrome” that wargamers so enjoy when exploring history using a “paper time machine” like Paul Koenig’s The Bulge: 6th Panzer Army
