Many readers of this blog may already be familiar with Vae Victis. For those who are not: VV is a gorgeous, lavish, high-quality French wargaming magazine. The publication of Konstantinos Travlos's Bloody Big Balkan Battles campaign book (BBBB) prompted Nicolas Strategos at VV to commission a review not only of BBBB but also of the parent BBB ruleset and its companion BBEB scenario book.
The review is mainly descriptive of the mechanisms and contents, but perhaps I can extract and translate its essential assessment here without committing too many crimes against the French language.
For BBEB, it just lists the wars covered. For BBBB, it goes further:
"The content is extremely educational and provides an excellent synthesis of events."
For the BBB rules:
"Overall, BBB offers a level of abstraction and a scale of game suited to 'big battles', with simple mechanisms and loads of high quality scenarios. Basically it allows you and some good buddies to get together around a standard wargame table and recreate the major 'collisions' of the second half of the 19th century (and the start of the 20th)."
Summary:
"Good points: simple mechanisms, suitable for multi-player games, high quality scenarios.
Flaws: running out of ammunition (this seems a bit excessive and will happen too often during a game)."
My thanks to Nicolas for arranging the review, and to VV's reviewer Jean-Philippe Imbach for doing a thorough job and bringing BBB to the attention of our wargaming comrades across the Channel.
I guess at some point we should do that French-language edition of BBB ...
The review is mainly descriptive of the mechanisms and contents, but perhaps I can extract and translate its essential assessment here without committing too many crimes against the French language.
For BBEB, it just lists the wars covered. For BBBB, it goes further:
"The content is extremely educational and provides an excellent synthesis of events."
For the BBB rules:
"Overall, BBB offers a level of abstraction and a scale of game suited to 'big battles', with simple mechanisms and loads of high quality scenarios. Basically it allows you and some good buddies to get together around a standard wargame table and recreate the major 'collisions' of the second half of the 19th century (and the start of the 20th)."
Summary:
"Good points: simple mechanisms, suitable for multi-player games, high quality scenarios.
Flaws: running out of ammunition (this seems a bit excessive and will happen too often during a game)."
My thanks to Nicolas for arranging the review, and to VV's reviewer Jean-Philippe Imbach for doing a thorough job and bringing BBB to the attention of our wargaming comrades across the Channel.
I guess at some point we should do that French-language edition of BBB ...
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