We've all played them! What was (is?) you favorite old-school SPI game?
I was always a big fan of the Modern Battles quads, but my two particular favorites were Yugoslavia and Wurzburg.
I found it very interesting that even back in the late-70s, the boys at SPI predicted a potential Yugoslav civil war split along ethnic lines, and actually created such a scenario in that game.
( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10610/yugoslavia )
I also enjoyed Wurzburg in large part b/c I'v driven through a lot of that terrain.
Howzabout y'all? What SPI games did you dig?
Quote from: bayonetbrant on February 01, 2012, 01:21:13 PM
We've all played them! What was (is?) you favorite old-school SPI game?
Well, we haven't ALL played them... ::)
OT, but I saw that a new ASL small scenario bundle was released recently. Another "great wargame series" that I haven't played.
regular old games, chick, wagram, marengo, nappy at waterloo
big games highway, war in the east and most great battles tss type stuff
lots of others too
I tended to enjoy Avalon Hill titles better than SPIs. Let me run some traps and see what SPI titles I have laying around here and what I liked out of them.
I really liked the Napoleon at War quad. Easy to get into and can be completed in an afternoon.
The Creature that Ate Sheboygan!
Well, seriously, I have to say that with SPI I played the more unusual titles, like Invasion America and Middle Earth-War of the Ring, to death.
But my actual favorite was the monster game Wacht am Rhien which I had set up on a couple of Ping Pong tables.
Quote from: J P Falcon on February 01, 2012, 08:53:02 PM
The Creature that Ate Sheboygan!
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi747.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fxx120%2FStaggerwing%2Fpic579229_md.jpg&hash=208cad118e2786163f86cd317c8f6944f8f6f994)
Get the fuck outta town! I actually played that game with my wargaming club in High School!
I've been thinking of getting a copy for nostalgia's sake to go with my Copies of Pblitz and and
Richthofen's War that I saved for lo these thirty-odd years...
I also have a copy of 4th Reich which was based on Norman Spinrad's book
the Iron Dream.
Yup...the Creature was a fun game indeed and I cannot recall a game on that subject done better...
Quote from: J P Falcon on February 01, 2012, 08:53:02 PM
The Creature that Ate Sheboygan!
Well, seriously, I have to say that with SPI I played the more unusual titles, like Invasion America and Middle Earth-War of the Ring, to death.
But my actual favorite was the monster game Wacht am Rhien which I had set up on a couple of Ping Pong tables.
Is the SPI War of the Ring the same one now reprinted (and updated) by Fantasy Flight? There was a recent reprint of that and I've heard it is excellent, but it is too rules intensive for me.
The ones I remember most were: Gondor / Sauron (got them together in a battlepack; we once played Gondor as part of a homebrew D&D campaign that included a mass-battle game).
I think my high-school gaming group played Sniper / Patrol once or twice, and Commando! once or twice.
I recall playing 3/4 of one their modern air war games, but I can't remember if it was Air War or Phantom V. Foxbat when i lived in residence.
Yours in gaming,
Jack Nastyface
PS...many of these titles available at The Sentry Box in Calgary, Alberta.
sheboygan was pretty good, we always like the creature that ate new york better!
I still have mine, and we get to "eat the blond" even today, at least every once and a while....
here's the geeklink it was part of an intro tilogy with naw, tower of azaan and the mini creatue
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13310/adventure-gaming
Quote from: son_of_montfort on February 01, 2012, 11:53:58 PM
Quote from: J P Falcon on February 01, 2012, 08:53:02 PM
The Creature that Ate Sheboygan!
Well, seriously, I have to say that with SPI I played the more unusual titles, like Invasion America and Middle Earth-War of the Ring, to death.
But my actual favorite was the monster game Wacht am Rhien which I had set up on a couple of Ping Pong tables.
Is the SPI War of the Ring the same one now reprinted (and updated) by Fantasy Flight? There was a recent reprint of that and I've heard it is excellent, but it is too rules intensive for me.
No..that one is area movement, while the SPI is hex based....below is the link to BBG of the SPI title....
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2228/war-of-the-ring
Terrible Swift Sword - at the time I got hold of it Avalon Hill had just come out with its Gettysburg 77 I think -and regimental level Civil War ... grand tactical scale, it was all something new to me... I was used to playing either Squad Leader or something operational like War in Europe/Europa, or the odd Third Reich session.
War in Europe was probably my favorite in terms of getting the most playing time. The 4 turns per year aspect of 3rd Reich turned me off a little -and divisional level seemed about right for me at the time.
I was also a fan of 'The Conquerors' and Napoleon's Last Battles.
My nostalgic favorite, but usually had to play solitaire, was Empires of the MIddle Ages.
By today's standards it was slow and obtuse, but I really got into the sweep of a game that run for seven hundred years.
And yes, we did have an ongoing war between the German Empire and the Byzantine empire, that ran in years about three-hundred-seventy-five years.
It didn't help that the respective sovereigns were man and wife in real life. There was all kinds of layers to the game, as they were also playing, (for fun at home,) Wellington's Victory.
The wife had the last laugh, though, when they divorced, she got the monster game collection and the house. Always wondered which Rob regretted losing the most.
Air War is still on my shelf. Played a good amount of it in college. New did get a shot at any of their ground games.
Air War was interesting.
My favourite? The RPG DragonQuest. Really, really good RPG. Shame it never got the attention it deserved. We played it a lot at a gaming club I was at in Edinburgh in the early 1980s. Good character setup, good combat, fun magic. Enjoyed it much more than D&D oer AD&D. Only one I liked as much in medieval RPGs was the first Chivalry and Sorcery first edition...:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonQuest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_(game)
MechWar '77
Quote from: Hartford688 on February 14, 2012, 04:14:46 PM
My favourite? The RPG DragonQuest. Really, really good RPG. Shame it never got the attention it deserved. We played it a lot at a gaming club I was at in Edinburgh in the early 1980s. Good character setup, good combat, fun magic. Enjoyed it much more than D&D oer AD&D. Only one I liked as much in medieval RPGs was the first Chivalry and Sorcery first edition...:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonQuest
I also played a lot of and really liked DragonQuest...truth be told I preferred it over AD&D. Combat always carried a risk, no matter how advanced your character. Once TSR acquired the rights to DragonQuest the writing was on the wall. Not SPI, but RuneQuest was another great RPG.
Air War was good but my fav was Invasion: America!
Great board and back story.
The Central Front Series was my favorite. Wore out a complete set, and had to obtain new copies. Wish the series would have been completed using the orginal rules.
My first and favorite SPI game was the Westwall Quad. My dad bought me the Bastogne folio in an attempt to get me to quit watching tv and reading comic books. The rest was history. Later on, I acquired all of the games of the quad but in folio form. I keep them all in the "Bridge Too Far" movie tie-in box. My favorite of the quad is probably Arnhem/Bridge Too Far. My least favorite is Remagen Bridgehead.
StarForce - unique mechanics and responsible for the most intense 3-player game of many-leveled bluff and deception I've ever been involved in.
Air War was good, but complicated IIRC.
I think I played an Ancients game from SPI that I enjoyed, but forget the name at the moment. Gettin old.
lessee, viking, chariot, yoeman, legion, spartan, phalanx, centurion, what else?
^ hmmmmm, methinks we've uncovered a pre-gunpowder wargamer!
:D
Forgot to mention for all the people who liked Creature that Ate Sheboygan, Heritage Games put out a small line of boxed pocket games (?) under the title Dwarfstar. They were a great bargain at $3.95 and were all designed to be played solitaire. Came out around 1984.
The best of the lot was Dragon Rage. It was the same idea as Sheboygan, but medieval fantasy.
Lots of rules to vary the makeup of the castle defenders, and different powers for the dragon, or dragons. A brilliant concept that could have generated many variants, but all lost when Heritage went belly up.
In the group I gamed with, this was actually more popular than Sheboygan.
I thought the best of the Heritage games was Grav Armor (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2153/grav-armor)
Wow! Great callout BB.
I did not remember that at all, and cannot recall any playing of that. My recollection is someone compared it to an advanced Rivets by Metagaming. Think this comparison shelved it for a lot of us.
Legion rings a bell.
Quote from: kwsrv on February 14, 2012, 09:00:32 PM
The Central Front Series was my favorite. Wore out a complete set, and had to obtain new copies. Wish the series would have been completed using the orginal rules.
My old game club playtested that for SPI.
I played War in the East until the text rubbed off the counters! - S&T Cobra was pretty good and took up a lot of table time, as did the Central Front series.
War in the East? Columbia block game or SPI? I have the Columbia block game. I love that system, but it ain't SPI.
Yep - the original SPI 'War in th East', 3 map 'monster game' was part of a set, 'War in Europe' being the other part. I think Decision Games are doing a re-print.
Operational level with unit production cycle - pretty basic system, mainly Div level, but good fun. Came out in the late 1970's - I actually made the trip to SPUK near Manchester to pick my copy up, round about 1978 (ish) if memory serves me right.
SPI games it would have to be a toss up between The Art of Siege and The Conquerors.
Both which I now have back in my possesion.
Quote from: magnus on February 26, 2012, 05:55:53 PM
SPI games it would have to be a toss up between The Art of Siege and The Conquerors.
Both which I now have back in my possesion.
I would like to add Art of Siege to my collection despite the fact that I don't play many boardgames any more.
.
Quote from: eyebiter on April 02, 2012, 06:06:40 PM
Ambush
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1608/ambush
I actually just ordered a used copy of this (as part of a gigantic game order). Very much looking forward to playing it!
Quote from: eyebiter on April 02, 2012, 06:06:40 PM
Ambush
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1608/ambush
Yes, but Ambush isn't really an SPI game... Technically is was Victory Games
Quote from: kwsrv on February 14, 2012, 09:00:32 PM
The Central Front Series was my favorite.
Me too. BAOR was my favourite of the series.Loved all the different nations.
And the 'Friction Point' was a very nice game mechanic.
Tough to decide on what my favorite old SPI game is. There are those titles I played a lot of of, such as PANZERGRUPPE GUDERIAN and NAPOLEON'S LAST BATTLES, but also games I wanted to play more of but didn't, such as CITYFIGHT and FIFTH CORPS.
How do I decide?
Quote from: J P Falcon on February 01, 2012, 08:53:02 PM
The Creature that Ate Sheboygan!
Well, seriously, I have to say that with SPI I played the more unusual titles, like Invasion America and Middle Earth-War of the Ring, to death.
But my actual favorite was the monster game Wacht am Rhien which I had set up on a couple of Ping Pong tables.
You're killing me! I played this so much, I memorized the critters. My favorite was the huge spider...you could block off the streets, and really do some damage!
Quote from: Epee1 on February 16, 2012, 08:32:02 PM
Air War was good, but complicated IIRC.
I think I played an Ancients game from SPI that I enjoyed, but forget the name at the moment. Gettin old.
Air War was so complicated that you could crash on takeoff..for a boardgame! Crazy complex.
I played the TSR re-release of Air War, after the rules were supposedly "cleaned up" and it was still a giant ball of fail.
Cobra was pretty good, but I spent a lot of hours playing Wacht am Rhein and War in the East.
Quote from: bayonetbrant on May 05, 2014, 04:59:45 AM
I played the TSR re-release of Air War, after the rules were supposedly "cleaned up" and it was still a giant ball of fail.
I've dipped a toe into the rules for
Birds of Prey which seems rather alien. But from the past scuttlebutt, Air War's rules was in a league all it's own.
Quote from: bayonetbrant on February 01, 2012, 01:21:13 PM
We've all played them! What was (is?) you favorite old-school SPI game?
My favorite was The Conquerors. Kind of like Rome II on paper:
http://boardgamegeek.com/images/boardgame/5023/the-conquerors
Quote from: MengJiao on May 06, 2014, 11:24:29 AM
Quote from: bayonetbrant on February 01, 2012, 01:21:13 PM
We've all played them! What was (is?) you favorite old-school SPI game?
My favorite was The Conquerors. Kind of like Rome II on paper:
http://boardgamegeek.com/images/boardgame/5023/the-conquerors
Looks like Excalibre reprints it. ;)
Hopefully they didn't F-up anything, like changing the counter art from a top-down view to a side view for the tanks or aircraft in their versions of
Panzer and
Wings. >:(
I enjoyed the Blue Grey quad games. But I was more of a AH and GDW fan at heart. Out of the many, many games I own, very few are SPI.
Quote from: ArizonaTank on May 07, 2014, 04:43:23 AM
I enjoyed the Blue Grey quad games. But I was more of a AH and GDW fan at heart. Out of the many, many games I own, very few are SPI.
I got rid of all my old SPI games. I gave away tons of games about 1990. I recall one guy exclaiming: "Do you know how much these are worth!" I said something like, "Yeah! They are great games!" I didn't want to rain on anyone's parade and say something like "Graphically, these are among the ugliest games of all time."
Strangely, I really don't miss them at all. Just a glance at those Conquerors counters was enough to dampen any lingering enthusiasm, though I did enjoy the game at the time.
These days games are so much better. For example, I just got Nightfighter, which is a really hilariously cool set of graphical objects -- kind of New Wave Sci-Fi in a blacklight black box and the game itself is nicely minimal and endearingly nutty.
Quote from: MengJiao on May 07, 2014, 09:17:56 AM
Quote from: ArizonaTank on May 07, 2014, 04:43:23 AM
I enjoyed the Blue Grey quad games. But I was more of a AH and GDW fan at heart. Out of the many, many games I own, very few are SPI.
I got rid of all my old SPI games. I gave away tons of games about 1990. I recall one guy exclaiming: "Do you know how much these are worth!" I said something like, "Yeah! They are great games!" I didn't want to rain on anyone's parade and say something like "Graphically, these are among the ugliest games of all time."
Strangely, I really don't miss them at all. Just a glance at those Conquerors counters was enough to dampen any lingering enthusiasm, though I did enjoy the game at the time.
These days games are so much better. For example, I just got Nightfighter, which is a really hilariously cool set of graphical objects -- kind of New Wave Sci-Fi in a blacklight black box and the game itself is nicely minimal and endearingly nutty.
I can't really explain why, but when I think of AH or GDW, I think of games I really liked.
When I think of SPI however, I think of their games I really despised.
Agree, SPI's dull graphics and colors had something to do with it ( but GDW was not much better). It is probably also that as a lad, I spent my hard earned money on some real SPI dogs... Global War scarred me somehow.... http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6938/global-war
Still have Air War... Very interesting game but almost unplayable.
Another favourite is Fortress America. Huge map stretching from Columbia to the Arctic Ocean and Alaska to Newfoundland.
Canadian and US troops try to fend off invader from the ESU, CSA and PAL. Hex and counter version of the MB Invasion America.
Many of those counters are worn on the corners from play.
Quote from: Barthheart on May 08, 2014, 05:49:20 AM
Still have Air War... Very interesting game but almost unplayable.
Another favourite is Fortress America. Huge map stretching from Columbia to the Arctic Ocean and Alaska to Newfoundland.
Canadian and US troops try to fend off invader from the ESU, CSA and PAL. Hex and counter version of the MB Invasion America.
Many of those counters are worn on the corners from play.
I had Fortress America back in the day, but I didn't enjoy it near as much as the others in the series. A&A and Shogun were superb but FA just left me kinda 'Meh' for some reason.
Quote from: ArizonaTank on May 08, 2014, 05:07:29 AM
Quote from: MengJiao on May 07, 2014, 09:17:56 AM
Quote from: ArizonaTank on May 07, 2014, 04:43:23 AM
I enjoyed the Blue Grey quad games. But I was more of a AH and GDW fan at heart. Out of the many, many games I own, very few are SPI.
I got rid of all my old SPI games. I gave away tons of games about 1990. I recall one guy exclaiming: "Do you know how much these are worth!" I said something like, "Yeah! They are great games!" I didn't want to rain on anyone's parade and say something like "Graphically, these are among the ugliest games of all time."
Strangely, I really don't miss them at all. Just a glance at those Conquerors counters was enough to dampen any lingering enthusiasm, though I did enjoy the game at the time.
These days games are so much better. For example, I just got Nightfighter, which is a really hilariously cool set of graphical objects -- kind of New Wave Sci-Fi in a blacklight black box and the game itself is nicely minimal and endearingly nutty.
I can't really explain why, but when I think of AH or GDW, I think of games I really liked.
When I think of SPI however, I think of their games I really despised.
Agree, SPI's dull graphics and colors had something to do with it ( but GDW was not much better). It is probably also that as a lad, I spent my hard earned money on some real SPI dogs... Global War scarred me somehow.... http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6938/global-war
It's kind of odd, but when I started thinking about SPI games I used to play, my first thought was "Those were fun!"....but then when I tried to recall the games I really liked, most of them were not SPI (or at least they were SPI as revamped by AH -- France 1940 and Panzerblitz).
Except for the Conquerors, most SPI games left a dreary pang of disappointment and despair. Mech War77 and the similar something 44 seem to have bee especially disappointing.
Quote from: Nefaro on May 08, 2014, 11:41:24 AM
Quote from: Barthheart on May 08, 2014, 05:49:20 AM
Still have Air War... Very interesting game but almost unplayable.
Another favourite is Fortress America. Huge map stretching from Columbia to the Arctic Ocean and Alaska to Newfoundland.
Canadian and US troops try to fend off invader from the ESU, CSA and PAL. Hex and counter version of the MB Invasion America.
Many of those counters are worn on the corners from play.
I had Fortress America back in the day, but I didn't enjoy it near as much as the others in the series. A&A and Shogun were superb but FA just left me kinda 'Meh' for some reason.
Not to side track the thread subject but...I have fond memories when I was a teenager in the late 80's of playing lots of games of Fortress America on many Saturday afternoons at our local gaming store. I recall hovertanks being one of my favorite units.