Intro (or I'm so excited!)
This is the first game review I’ve written in several years, but I felt strongly enough about Lost Battles to break out of my inertia and get back to the keyboard.
I’ll start with my incredible anticipation for this game. I am exactly the target audience for Lost Battles. Like many wargamers, I fancy myself something of an amateur historian. I even went back to school in my 30’s to study military history, which culminated with a thesis on <PERSON>. So Lost Battles is right up my alley. It focuses on ancient warfare, it’s designed by Dr. <PERSON>, a history professor, and it’s accompanied by a several hundred page book that includes chapters on the history of the battles, the reasons behind the critical design decisions, and additional historical insights that can be gleaned by using the model. In addition, Lost Battles sports extremely high production values, with excellent artwork, mounted tiles, oversized and rounded edge counters, and even includes a second game of strategic warfare in the ancient world. I didn’t even blink when I plopped down the $130, including shipping, to preorder the game from Noble Knight Games.
It comes with a book! Talk about you designer notes
When I received the game and opened the box, I was not disappointed. The bits really are excellent. The rulebook is glossy, with lots of pictures, and includes 35+ scenarios in the back. The counters and maps are great. Some folks complain that the green background on the counters, which matches the green grass of the board tiles, makes it a bit hard to see the units. I disagree and think they are great, making the figures on the units stand out. 92
Also, the unit counters have no combat factors of any kind on them, only excllent stylized artwork, and their type (as in Veteran Hoplite Infantry, or Levy Light Cavalry). They look great, and if you’re a fan of <PERSON> weapon systems matrix (in the excellent book The Art of War in the Western World) then you’ll love these guys.
Beautiful, just beautiful
They only issues I see with the components are that the tiles warped a bit (not really a big deal since they aren’t too big) and that they didn’t include any system to keep the square terrain tiles from sliding around during play (this is a more significant issue). The latter point sort of bothers me, since even the designer recommending using the extra material on the edges of the counter sheets, of which there was plenty, to create puzzle piece locking edge pieces. Why didn’t they just die cut the sheet that way? Plus, the green of the units didn’t carry over to the edge of the counter sheet, so the frame would be stark white.
Why didn't they use the extra material to make a frame for the tiles?
Well, it’s a minor quibble anyway, easily overlooked for a game that provides fun game play, a strong narrative, and historical insights.
Unfortunately, Lost Battles does not provide any of these things...
Gameplay
Let’s start with the design decision that ruined the rest of the game. The board is made up just 20 tiles, each of which is an individual location. Units from opposing armies cannot co-exist in a single tile, and every unit in a location must face the same direction. The designer supports his decision for such a coarse map with a few points (and since I sold my copy already I can’t refer back to the book, and will go from memory).
First, he wanted to design a relatively simple game, that would play quickly, and therefore wanted to keep the map simple and both sides to around 20 units. That is an admirable goal, and one I have no issue with. In fact, Command and Colors: Ancients has the same goal and achieves it admirably.
Second, Dr. <PERSON> argues that due to our lack of specific and credible detailed information about the battlefields themselves, attempting to model more accurate renditions of the terrain is futile in any case, and prone to error. On this last point, I agree with the good professor, to an extent. The sources for many ancient battles make only the most general comments about the terrain, such a setting up behind a river, or on a clear plain etc. In many or most cases, historians can’t agree on where the battles took place, so we can’t walk the ground today, and in other cases the course of rivers has shifted, or other changes have occurred.
Twenty locations in total? Bad move.
The problem is, Dr. <PERSON> went too far in abstracting the terrain, and made it too coarse. Afterall, we are talking about a game here, not a dry academic exercise... 92