11 November 2011

Random Friday Wargaming: The Guns of August

With today being Veterans' Day, it seems like we should have a WWI game. And why not Avalon Hill's classic The Guns of August?





Discuss it on CSW here... but good luck finding copies out there, it's been out of print for a while and an unpunched one will be quite expensive.


Master links/images from Boardgamegeek.com; message boards linked to Consimworld. Other links to the actual game pages...

Anyone out there ever take this game for a whirl? What did you think?


By: Brant

5 comments:

besilarius said...

Knew quite a few people who had the game and enjoyed it.
PErsonally preferred the SPI monster game on the whole of WWI, and even the very ancient 1914, published by Avalon Hill and designed by a pre-SPI Jim Dunnagin.
The map for 1914 was by any standard simply gorgeous.

Anonymous said...

Classic wargame? Classic boredom! The Western front situation was just awful - two thick lines of counters poking at each other to no great effect, for many many turns. The Eastern Front and toerh subsidiary fronts were a more interesting, just because they weren't so clogged.

The SPI take on World War One was much better, and over more quickly (the S&T 100-counter game, not the War in Europe kit). I think someone tried to revise Guns of August once.

Any thoughts on the Ted Raicer WWI game that appeared in Command? It looked good, but I never had the time or space to play it.

Brant said...

I reviewed his bog-box game for Wargamer.com

http://www.wargamer.com/articles/board-game-review/the-first-world-war-2274.html

you can sort of get to it through that link - not sure the follow-on pages load right. Might have to republish that one over here.

Anonymous said...

Sorry I meant Ted's monster game what was in Command: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10149/the-great-war-in-europe

And I have to say I wondered what "bog-box" meant... first thought was that someone had used the game's container for a latrine... but the linked pages don't load, so I don't know the your conclusions....

Brant said...

I meant "big-box" but don't have a good way to edit comments.
I know it's not the same game, but it's the same designer... :)

I'll get around to reprinting it sooner or later. I think I'll pretty much need to reprint everything I had over there since it's all worked up after the migration.