John New
United States
Accokeek
Maryland
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Stones River recreates the Second Battle of Murfreesboro, which was fought from December 31, 1862, to January 2, 1863, in Middle Tennessee. Although the historical battle itself was inconclusive, the Union Army's repulse of two Confederate attacks and the subsequent Confederate withdrawal were a much-needed boost to Union morale after the defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, and it dashed Confederate aspirations for control of Middle Tennessee.*
Decision Games’ Stones River is part of its Folio Series and harkens back to SPI’s Blue & Gray Quad Games of the 1970s. According to Decision Games, Stones River updates the SPI classics with a slight change in scale to 352 yards per hex, an updated game system that treats unit differences more accurately, and a combat system that includes step losses.
My friend and I sat down last Saturday and attempted to play a game of Stones River. I say attempted because after a couple of turns we simply became so frustrated with the rules and the unnecessary complexities of the game system that we gave up in sheer frustration.
Now let me be very clear here – I am no enemy of wargame complexity. But the complexity has to serve both the game system and the game as a game. What I oppose is complexity for the sake of complexity itself – the layering on of chrome-upon-chrome rules that do little to add to the experience other than send players searching feverishly through the rulebook. And that, I fear, is the situation we both found in Stones River.
A primary failing is the rules themselves – they seriously need a good editing. The command span of leaders is never defined – we came up with a solution, but we’re not sure if it’s correct. The definition of the function of the trains is obscure to the point of opacity. Moreover, the definitions of disruption, rout, and the interplay of both in combat results are muddled and occasionally contradictory. My friend and I are wargamers of considerable experience (stretching back to the ‘70s), nevertheless, we often found ourselves scratching our heads and saying, “OK the rules say do this, then do that, then do this: does that make any sense?” We spent more time searching the rules trying to understand how the game system works than actually playing the game – and for a “folio” game that just doesn’t seem right.
Which leads me to the heart of my criticism of this game. Sometimes you want a full-on feast and sometimes you just want beer and pretzels. And a “folio” game should probably tend towards the latter rather than the former. Is it necessary to have rules contemplating different types of attacks (skirmish, charge, last stand, etc.) at this scale? Is it necessary to have to roll for the movement allowance of every single unit in one’s army when the HQ unit is inactive? (that’s a lot of wristage). Is there a reason for having what I consider to be a needlessly over-complicated CRT (Dr, Dc, Dn, Dx, etc.) with multiple options for many of them (choosing disruption or retreat, or step reduction), each with multiple outcomes? And is it necessary to have multiple morale checks during the course of one combat in a folio game? And don’t get me started on the nuances of the ZOC rules. I mean, this is not “Terrible Swift Sword!” But the rules and gameplay here are (to my mind) much more dense, more muddled, and unnecessarily convoluted than comparably-sized games using the TSS-GBACW system, e.g., Stonewall, Wilson’s Creek, etc.
To be fair, there are some good things here. I like the step reduction system, and the leadership rules that reward keeping brigades fighting together (assuming that we did get that command span thingie correct). The game is certainly handsome to look at. And I heartily applaud DG’s good intentions in upgrading the old SPI folio and quad games to try to bring them up to date and render them more playable. Some of those old games were terrific, requiring hardly any tweaking at all, and some required a major reworking. But, if Stones River is anything to go by, DG simply went overboard in its "update", trying to mount the equivalent, as it were, of 16-inch guns and torpedo tubes on a design meant to be a Boston Whaler and doing a poor job of organizing it into the bargain. We intend to do a major re-design of the rules to establish a reasonable level of playability here. But as the game stands, we were disappointed.
* from Wikipedia
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Pete Belli
United States
Florida
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An accurate appraisal.
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Richard Boyes
United States
Bothell
Washington
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You had more patience than me! I was rolling with laughter while reading over the rules complexities of lines of retreat and safe lines of retreat. It never reached turn 1 for me.
Maybe it would be best to grab the old Blue and Gray rules and apply them to this game.
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Michael Lavoie
United States
Nashua
New Hampshire
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What a shame. I had high hopes for this series and for this game in particular, as I enjoy gaming this particular battle (I've only written three reviews on BGG, and all of them are of games that involve this battle). This one won't be making it into my collection any time soon.
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Peter Martin
United States
Oceanside
California
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Completely agree. However, all is not lost. I have tried playing this with Sean's rules and they were quite good. They are in the files section here. If I get the time, I'm thinking of using Sean's rules as a template to fix the Shiloh game.
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Matt Irsik
United States
Clearfield
Utah
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A good synopsis of the problems with this game and it will save me from having to write an even more critical review. I have some of the old SPI quad games and was excited for this to come out, but after reading the rules and playing the first several turns, I gave up. As you mentioned, there's just too much detail for what is supposed to be a 2-3 hour, fast playing wargame that could be used to introduce new players, much as the old quad games used to be. I own all of the GMT GBACW games and I expect complexity from those, but not here. To top it all off, the extra features, i.e., rules and systems, don't add anything significant to the overall gameplay.
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Posted Tue Nov 15, 2011 8:32 pm
