Microgame madness!

 Due to space constraints, last nights game needed to be something small and compact and that could easily fit on a kitchen table.  Step forward a couple of Microgames and an evening of late '70s nostalgia (and a lot of squinting at tiny cardboard counters!)

I've posted before about my love for the old Metagaming Microgames series and I've acquired a few via eBay.  As a game series they are very much of their time and production values are pretty low, but that was kind of the point.  The games were cheap and cheerful ($2.95 according to a couple of the games sitting on my desk... according to the Bank of England's inflation calculator this is the equivalent of a heft $16.22 today!)  and, although some of them don't always work as game systems, there are often some really interesting mechanics and ideas in there. I think we've become very spoiled by much higher production values these days and I can't imagine a game with a folded paper map, tiny flimsy counters and all packed in a ziploc bag would sell today.

For our 1st game of the evening we went with GEV... the  sequel of sorts to the classic Ogre.  GEV has a bigger map and introduces terrain features and is much more of a conventional wargame.  Each side has a mix of Tanks (heavy and light), Missile Launchers, Howitzers, Infantry and of course, GEVs.  Steve Jackson clearly thought the future of warfare was hovercraft!  There's also the option to deploy Ogre's as part of your force (the cybernetic tank... not the grumpy monsters).  The mix of troops types as well as the terrain features make it a slightly more complicated game and add an amount of depth.  We played the Breakthrough scenario, where a small force of GEVs has to make it's way off the northern board edge,  while the opponent has a mix of armour and infantry.  

The route to the northern edge of the map is cluttered with swamps and woods with pathways through it, giving the defenders a chance to predict where the GEVs will try and force their way through.  Conveniently there's also a large lake and river which is handy for the hovercraft but is likely to be well defended.  I managed to get several GEVs off the table but at quite a cost with over half my force being wiped out.

As this was a fairly quick game we opted for more nostalgia and played a game of Starfire.  This game, prodced by Task Force Games in 1979 is a proto-Star Fleet Battles, written by Stephen Cole who also created SFB.  I spent may long hours playing Star Fleet Battles back in the 80s, usually at my friends flat in Glasgow's West End with games punctuated by trips out for fish suppers and beer.  It was a great game but did sink under the weight of an ever-growing complexity as more and more supplements emerged.

Starfire is a very simple version with, initally, a limited range of weapon options and very simple damage system where each hit simply crosses off a feature of a ship (shields, then armour, then hull etc)... each ship has a line of letters representing these features in a variety of orders.  Interestingly the scenarios in the book are linked and as you progress through them the technology advances and more options are included.  It's easy to see the beginnings of SFB in the game, albeit in a very simplified, but very playable way.

Tiny, tiny counters!

The scenario has one side attacking a defended Starbase.  My defending ships were all either destroyed or left weaponless but the Starbase remained unscathed.  I now have a real hankering to dig out my copy of Star Fleet Battles!