GBoH: Taking it from the top

This blog is to chronicle my playthrough of my Great battles of History collection in mostly chronological order.

Recommend

The Big One: Kadesh

Posted by Ryan Powers

Chariots of Fire

08 Dec 2011

Ryan Powers

(keethrax)

United States
Marble
Minnesota

The Battle of Kadesh 1300 BCE

Ramses II vs Muwatalli II's Hittites.

The session report: There's no ambiguity in who was victorious at Kadesh this time...

This is the big one. Or at least a big one. Lots going on. Actual terrain. Various divisions held in reserve. Two-man chariots with and without runner infantry. Three-man chariots.

Heck, it is so big there are three options right form the start. One is a set piece battle. One has the Hittites deliberately ambushing the Egyptians. And one is more of an accidental ambush by the Hittites. Having played a bunch of set piece battles recently, I eliminated that one from consideration and flipped a coin between the other two. This resulted in the reconnaissance in force/accidental ambush option being chosen.

Despite the imbalance, this one is one of the gems of Chariots of Fire. There's a lot going on here, and it was pretty fun. Even the "partial" ambush proved devastating to the Egyptians. I can't imagine how badly the "full" ambush version would have gone. If you're considering this one for play vs an opponent and care at all about balance, I highly recommend avoiding both and giving the set piece battle a shot. If you don't care about balance, there is a lot to like in this version though.

Chariots of Fire

4 Comments

Thu Dec 8, 2011 9:17 pm

Post Comment

Hidden Among the Leaves

(Michalis30)

Greece
Heraklion
Crete

Excellent! Thank you for your update. To be honest, even if I have a couple of GBoH games, I am not sold to the system. However, CoF is a must buy in my list (egyptians, summerians and chariots-yay!).

M.

Posted Fri Dec 9, 2011 11:32 am
- Choose your Dice
  - d4
  - d6
  - d8
  - d10
  - d12
  - d20
  - d100
  - Help
  - Roll
  - Comment (Optional)
- Reply
- Quote

Ryan Powers

(keethrax)

United States
Marble
Minnesota

Michalis30 wrote:

As a system goes GBoH has a lot of flaws. One of the biggest for me being the level of detail represented in GBoH generally does not exist in the historical/archaeological record. I'm a computer programmer by trade, but came very close to going to grad school in archaeology. In fact I was recruited fairly heavily to do some computer simulations in the field of archaeology, both in terms of population migrations and computer modelling of ancient iron smelting furnaces. As such, I know enough about some of this stuff that it grates on my nerves at times. The system adds complexity to match detail that really isn't there in the first place.

On the otehr hand simplifying it out to only cover the details we do know more solidly doesn't make for a very interesting game to me. So I accept that the detail is largely false because the effect it has on the decision making process.

For me, ancients wargaming turns the normal rule of thumb that says "more detail = better simulation but worse game" on it's head. The detail improves the game even if it is of questionable simulation value. There is a point of diminishing returns though.

This is very much a topic I plan on addressing in more detail as part of this blog, but first I need to catch up with my session reports.

Edited Fri Dec 9, 2011 6:19 pm
Posted Fri Dec 9, 2011 6:17 pm
- Choose your Dice
  - d4
  - d6
  - d8
  - d10
  - d12
  - d20
  - d100
  - Help
  - Roll
  - Comment (Optional)
- Reply
- Quote