|
RE: How PG continues to grow on me.
I developed more games than I care to remember during my tenure with AP, but now that the dust has settled and I can approach gaming again as something to do purely for fun, the only AP games I'm interested in are (a) chit-draw games like JP's Third Reich, Great Pacific War, Bitter Victory, etc., and (b) PG. I love the chit-draw games because they're wonderful solo games that can also be played with two or more players, and because the chit-draw system adds just the right amount of FOW to keep me on the edge of my seat each turn. That unpredictability adds a level of excitement I never got with TCS, which to me was just too deterministic because of the orders you had to write and adhere to. And while Squad Leader certainly got you right down there in the foxholes where you could taste the dirt, the rigid sequence of play made the whole thing feel too mechanical; it worked for me on the intellectual level, but not on the gut level.
But PG is whole different animal. It has a huge "wow factor" because players have such broad latitude to do what they want when they want to do it, and because the morale rules combined with alternating activation, opportunity fire, and Fog of War rolls make it highly unlikely that what happens each turn will hew to one's best-laid plans. PG probably doesn't appeal to the cerebral gamer who wants to devise a grand plan and then execute it to see if it works. But for gamers like me who want a wargame that puts one right in the middle of the chaos of battle and forces one to embrace the chaos, PG is perfect.
|
