Autumn Mist: The Battle of the Bulge
From: Fiery Dragon Productions Inc.
Reviewed by: Ron McClung
Autumn Mist: The Battle of the Bulge mini-game is a new mini-board game from Fiery Dragon Productions Inc..
The Battle of the Bulge – one of the greatest battles of all time – has probably been done a hundred times in board-game format, if not a thousand. What difference would one more make, I had to ask? I really could not tell you. In the tradition of the old Steve Jackson Games tin-box games, like Cars Wars and Ogre , Fiery Dragon brings to the market another set of strategy games focused on historical battles. One of the first in its line is Autumn Mist – The Battle of the Bulge.
From the page # 2:
“Autumn Mist is a simulation game of the German last-ditch offensive through the Ardenne Forst in December 1944.”
Components: The game is contained within a small 7.5″ by 5.25″ tin container, with a paper hex map, several boards of counters or chits and reference cards. There are several types of chits and I had a hard time discerning the individual types. There are units, attack, defend and activation counters as well as specialized counters for specific actions and tactics. The unit chits contain a host of information including combat factor, movement factor and ID numbers. There are poor and elite units. There are infantry units and armor units; artillery units to armored engineering units. Each unit is identified with its basic military unit symbol. For example, infantry is the box with an ‘x’ in it and armor is a box with an oblong shape in the middle.
The map is 15″ by 10″ full color piece of paper with numbered hexes all over the battle field. Each starting unit starts out on a specific hex. It took me hours to fully set up the initial battle field. There is a variety of terrain on the map, including wooded areas, roads and rivers.
My first complaint is that it is a counter-based game – too many counters too keep up with. I did not play many of the classic Avalon Hill games with square card board counters and paper maps, but I played a few. This game is like those games. However, because of its small size, it makes it difficult to keep all the chits in the proper place in game play. One wrong sneeze or simple sigh, and you start all over again. Setting up is hard enough. Also, the immense variety of the chits forced me to spend more time than I would normally be willing to for a board game looking for the one you need. In my set, it seems that a couple are missing, in fact. More hardcore war gamers would probably say that the variety adds to the realism of the battle simulation, however. The designer obviously liked a certain level of realism, and it shows in this game.
System: The sequence of play follows three steps – Initial Phase, Operations Phase, and Turn End Phase. In the Initial Phase, reinforcements are placed. In the Operations phase, chits are added to the randomizer for all units, then picked, and units can move and conduct combat. The Turn End Phase is the basic up-keep phase, where everything is set up for the next start of the Initial Phase.
Turn sequence is determined by the Randomizer chits – a series of chits denoted with the different HQ designations on them. One player draws a chit and that HQ commands units within its command range. There are two types of HQ chits – corps and army. Corp HQs command andmaintain supply to a certain amount of units based on its command range, and the army HQ maintains supplies to the corps HQs. HQs can also move as the units advance. Supply is determined by the number of movement points from the unit to its HQ, and from the corps HQ to the army HQ.
Movement is done in three ways: Tactical, Strategic or Exploitation. Tactical is the movement used before combat as units move off-road into tough terrain. Strategic movement is along the roads on the map and is generally faster, as long as it is uninterrupted. Exploitation movement is a specialized movement taken after combat. Terrain varies in movement cost, from clear costing 1 to forest costing 3. Of course, every mobile unit in the game has its own movement rating.
From page 15:
“’People are saying that I only design games on obscure topics and battles. Yet it is an unwritten rule that every game designer has to do a Bulge game, so this one is mine…’ – Brian Train, Designer”
Combat is handled through attack and defend chits, dice and a table. Only units adjacent can attack each other. There are attack chits representing attack missions that the attacker chooses from, as well as defender chits the defender chooses from. They are compared on the Mission Matrix Table from which the results can be read. The results include casualty rolls, attacker advancing a number of hexes and/or the defender retreating a number of hexes. When casualties are taken, the unit is reduced in strength, which means you have to replace the current chit with the weaker chit.
My biggest obstacle was figuring out what chits were what. I had a hard time figuring out what were the randomizer chits and figuring out their exact meaning. After going through each chit individually, by process of elimination and matching up numbers, I was able to figure out what was what. Because the rulebook has no pictures of what the non-unit chits look like, it took a lot of time to figure it all out. The rulebook was meant to be simple, but they sacrificed clarity for that.
The rule book also supplies some special and variant rules that are interesting. Special rules include Air units (which add to ground units’ effectiveness) and weather (which effects all units’ effectiveness). One of the interesting variant rules is called “Fog of War”, which adds a Stratego element to the game where the force is not revealed to the opponent until encountered. I liked that variant a lot.
In conclusion, I had a hard enough time figuring out the game itself, but I eventually did. The hardest part is discerning between the different functions of the counters. It required more work than I was willing to put into a game like this to lay out every chit and have them laid out for play. The fact that you have to switch out chits as they get damaged made it even more complicated. The tin box would have to be divided out into at least 20 little compartments to contain the units individual chits, if one wanted to be organized about it.
Once you get passed the chits, the system is truly unique, simple and sleek. A lot of thought and research was put into it, and it is a very intelligent game. If one wanted to play this game seriously, I’d recommend laminating the map or even gluing it to card board. I would get a container with many small compartments to organize the chits to make play easy. Some units only have one chit, whiles others might have three. If you do not organize them in a container, you will be organizing the chits each time you play, by unit type and unit ID number. This would not be something that I would look forward to.
The rulebook needs to be a little more clear and concise about what each chit represented. Each reference card had a blank side, so more reference material could have put there. I think they were trying to be too compact in their design and cut out too much in the editing process. Perhaps I need too many pictures, but I have always found that they help a lot.
In the end, I was torn by Autumn Mist. I never played it because it took me too long to figure out the chits, and I still was not sure about a few of them. Something this small, in my view, should not be this involved. However, it seems to be a very sleek and quick system, so it has that going for it. If you can get past the setup and the cumbersome number of chits, you can enjoy this game.
For more details on Fiery Dragon Productions Inc. and their new mini-board game “ Autumn Mist: The Battle of the Bulge mini-game ” check them out at their website http://www.fierydragon.com/counterstrike.htm and at all of your local game stores.
Autumn Mist: The Battle of the Bulge mini-game
From: Fiery Dragon Productions Inc.
Type of Game: mini-board game
Written by: Brian Train
Game Design by: Brian Train
Cover Art by: Kiern Tanner
Additional Art by: Kerry Anderson, Claudio, Pozas
Number of Pages: 15
Game Components Included: Rulebook, 280 counters, one map. several reference cards and two dice
Retail Price: $ 21.95 (US)
Number of Players: 2
Player Ages: 14+
Play Time: 4+
Item Number: FDP5001
ISBN: 781894 693288
Website: http://www.fierydragon.com/counterstrike.htm
Reviewed by: Ron McClung