Let's Play Here I Stand - by email

I don't know why it took me so long to find out that GMT Games has done an epic board game on the Reformation, but now that I know about it, we're definitely playing Here I Stand. A monstrously complicated card-driven game with a 40-page rulebook and separate setup guide, Here I Stand has mechanics for everything from theological debates and French chateaus to Ottoman piracy and circumnavigating the world, not to mention a table where you roll to find out how Henry of Eight's love life is going, complete with an individual cardboard counter for each wife. At the end of the day, whoever has the most victory points wins.

Our bodies are not ready; they will not be ready; nonetheless we are doing this.

**

After a succesful attempt at the Game of Thrones board game, we got most of the gang back together for a game of Here I Stand. We're uniquely qualified to play this. I'll be first in player order as the Ottomans; I've majored in Arabic and Islamic Studies in the past, and most importantly, I've read Mikael Hakim several times. Also, here's a picture of me at the Reformation Wall in Geneva.

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Vacation, day 3. The trip continues; until I get back online, enjoy this selfie I took with Oliver Cromwell at Geneva's absolutely ludicrous Reformation Wall.

A post shared by Michael Halila (@michaelhalila) on May 26, 2017 at 12:46am PDT

Perhaps even more impressively, we've arranged to have players with theology degrees represent both the Vatican and the Protestants, so I fully expect those theological debate mechanics to get a thorough working out. With three less theological but very competent board gamers representing France, England and the Hapsburgs, we are ready to Here I Stand.


**

Our first attempt took eight grinding hours, during which we managed to play a grand total of three (3) turns.

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A post shared by Michael Halila (@michaelhalila) on Feb 22, 2020 at 1:49pm PST

For posterity, let it be recorded that the first card played in the first action phase was Shipbuilding, as the event. This actually turned out quite well for me, since Barbary Pirates came out fairly early, and the Hapsburgs invaded Algiers and I had to go through quite some trouble to drive their fleet back! Meanwhile, the other bastards played both Revolt in Egypt and War in Persia, so my armies disappeared off to fight these foreign wars very quickly; while I did knock out Hungary-Bohemia, I spent most of the game firmly on the back foot as I had very few cards or troops.

Meanwhile, the Reformation got off to a slowish start and the Diet of Worms ended in stalemate. Things looked bad for France when England declared war and invaded, with Hapsburg troops massing on the Spanish border, but the English army was outflanked and defeated, and the Hapsburgs not only made peace with the French but actually allied with them. The French built some chateaus and drove into Italy, which left them with the most victory points when we hit our time constraint during the third turn.

**

Based on our initial attempt, I only really have three criticisms of Here I Stand. One is that the board can get very cluttered at times; to the extent that it can genuinely get confusing trying to figure out what is where, especially looking down the length of the board. The other is that the rules really can be absolutely bewildering at times, especially when trying to look something up in mid-game - which, quite frankly, is something that's going to be happening a lot. It's been said that none of the individual rules in Here I Stand are particularly complicated, and I sort of accept that. But the problem is the sheer volume of rules, which makes it really difficult to get a handle on all of them. So to put it mildly, a generous amount of time needs to be allocated to poring over the rulebook in-game.

This really exacerbates the third and biggest problem: it can be a long time between player turns. When the Protestant player slaps down A Mighty Fortress and starts making his six reformation attempts in Germany, requiring us to dig out the rulebook and figure out exactly how many dice he's rolling and who wins ties where, and you're a player with no direct stake in any of this - how do you not tune out? It can also be mildly frustrating when players are getting very different amounts of cards; I spent something like half of turn three just hanging around, watching the Hapsburgs demolish my position in Hungary, since I started with three cards and he had seven or eight.

The sheer complexity of the rules can make it very difficult to get invested in the game, and the amount of downtime between turns can make it very difficult to stay invested. Despite this, I found Here I Stand to be an absolutely fascinating experience; I can easily understand how someone else might find it to be anything but.

**

Having said this, I feel that Here I Stand is an absolutely extraordinary game, and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to play it. Our original plan was to dedicate a summer weekend to playing it properly, but then, of course, the coronavirus happened. We've quarantined ourselves and cancelled all our gaming activities for the spring; in practical terms, you could say we're stuck here in our apartment and there's not a lot we can do about it.

So instead of a weekend of Here I Stand, we're going to be responsible citizens and play out this reformation the old-fashioned way: by email. With the help of my partner, I will be maintaining the physical board in our living room, and everyone will be e-mailing in their moves. Here it is, by the way:

Both the rulebook and scenario book are available for download on the GMT Games website. We'll be playing the long campaign, obviously. I'll be doing regular updates on this blag and my social medias as well; because there will be a full written record of every move, I can post a play-by-play account here. I'm going to shoot for one post per turn, but we'll see how it goes.

Finally, I thought I'd say a couple of words about each faction and their starting position in the game, so that if anyone wants to follow along they'll have some idea where everyone's starting from. Every faction also has a home card (the Papacy has two), which is never discarded and always returns to that player's hand.


The Ottomans

Fresh from the conquest of Constantinople, the Ottomans are ruled by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and start the game at war with the minor power Hungary-Bohemia. Historically, this was when the Ottomans laid siege to Vienna but eventually had to withdraw. The Ottomans are the only power that can build corsairs and gain victory points through piracy.

The Ottoman home card is Janissaries. Named after the slave soldier corps that came to dominate the Ottoman military, the card can be played for five command points, or used to generate troops or affect a combat.

The Hapsburgs

The mightiest power in Europe, Emperor Charles V rules modern-day Spain, the Netherlands, southern Italy, Austria and Germany. They're still embroiled in the Italian Wars with France, which started in the previous century, and so start the game at war with France. As ruler of Germany, the Emperor also gets involved in the religious struggle, and with a conquistador already underway, they also have a headstart to the New World. There's no areas of the game where the Hapsburgs aren't involved.

The Hapsburg home card is Holy Roman Emperor. The card represents Charles V charging around his widely dispersed empire, and can be used to move him about and conduct operations, making sure the Emperor is always in the thick of it.

England

English policy on the eve of the Reformation is concerned with exactly one thing: producing a lawful heir for Henry VIII. There's a pregnancy table for his wives and everything. Also, as the game goes on, the English Reformation starts, and everything generally gets more complicated. The English are secure on their island, but have to reach out in order to win.

The English home card is Six Wives of Henry VIII, which can be used to declare war on England's traditional enemies (i.e. everyone) or pursue Henry's quest for a male heir.

France

The French start the game under the rule of Francis I, a great patron of the French Renaissance. The French are trying to conquer Italy, but can also gain victory points by building chateaus and, of course, colonizing the New World.

The French home card is Patron of the Arts, which is good for either 5 command points or building a chateau.

The Papacy

The Medici pope Leo X is going to have his papacy blighted by that dude from Germany. The Vatican holds very little territory and is at war with the French over North Italy, and needs to divide their attention between preserving their holdings and fighting the German heresy. They can gain victory points by building St. Peter's Basilica, which is what exacerbated the heresy in the first place, and have the theologically delightful action Burn Books for 2 CP.

Uniquely, the Papacy has two home cards: Papal Bull and Leipzig Debate.

These let the Pope excommunicate Christian rulers and call theological debates to try to quash the rising Protestant heresy.

The Protestants

Speaking of heresy, here's the last of the six factions in impulse order. Until the Schmalkaldic League event happens, the Protestants play very differently from the other factions: with no military or controlled territory, they focus on converting spaces on the map to Protestantism.

The Protestant home card is Here I Stand, which lets them insert Martin Luther into debates or find cards in the discard pile so they can get their various conversion events into play.

The battle between the Protestants and the Catholics is tracked on the Religious Struggle Card:

**

So, the game has been set up, the e-mail thread has been started: for the next who knows how many months, we are Here I Stand. You can read what happened on the first turn here!

Let's Play Scythe

We've played several games on the boardgamegeek.com all-time top ten list: Star Wars: Rebellion, Twilight Struggle, and a lot of Terraforming Mars. These have all been simply excellent, so it seems inevitable that we would get around to trying Scythe.

Ilya Repin: Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870-73)

**

What sold me on Scythe immediately was Jakub Różalski's art on the cover. The image of farmers in a field, with giant mechs striding in the background, was like a steampunk Simon Stålenhag painting: beautiful and wonderfully evocative.

The contents of the box live up to the cover art. Basically everything is well-made: the player boards are pleasantly sturdy, all the art is absolutely lovely, and I really like some of the character and mech miniatures. The map is colorful and can be a little tough to get a handle on at first, but it works and is really quite pretty. This is just a quality product, and I'm very happy with it.

Scythe is set in a sort of dieselpunk alternative history 1920's Central Europe, where slightly hokily named factions like Polania and Rusviet vie for control of the land and resources around the mysterious Factory. Rusviet especially is just such a stupid name. Anyway each player gets a randomized faction and player board, resulting in a combination like Agricultural Saxony or Patriotic Nordic, which is what I ended up with. Below is a view of my boards, with my blue mechs on the left.

Each player starts with a character and two workers on the board, and several more workers and four mechs waiting to be deployed. Your workers produce resources and more workers, and the resources are used to deploy mechs and build stuff. Building mechs also unlocks abilities for your character and mechs, and the mechs can transport workers around. Your character can get into encounters and explore the factory, and of course your character and mechs can fight the other players' characters and mechs.

The objective of the game is to earn more coins than your opponents, which is done by completing various tasks and earning stars; once someone earns their sixth star, the game ends and everyone calculates how many coins they get, which is based on how much popularity their faction has accumulated. It feels a little unnecessarily complicated, but I guess the point is that it makes it difficult to figure out who's winning while the game is still going on.

This all leads to Scythe being sort of a halfway house between an engine-building game like Terraforming Mars and a more traditional strategy board game, and it does kinda work. It helps that mechs are inherently very cool. In our first game, I found it a little difficult to figure out what to do, but one clever thing that helps is that the actions you can take are all found on your player board - and you can't pick the same one twice in a row. You place a counter on the action you've picked, and on your next turn you have to move it to another action. It's good to reach the Factory as quickly as possible with your character, but to get there you need to cross a river. This requires deploying the mech that unlocks the riverwalk ability, which requires producing metal. So getting started is easy in that sense: you pretty much alternate between moving and producing until you get the mech deployed, and then it's a race to the Factory.

Our first game was mostly a matter of figuring out how everything works. I'll admit I didn't have much of a strategy beyond trying different things and trying to get to the Factory first, which I did get done. The Crimean player was somewhat aggressive and got into several fights, which was good because we got to try the combat system! Me and the Soviet player were a little more passive, and eventually Saxony won the game with a military offensive.

Our first Scythe experience was fun enough that we're definitely trying it again! Like I said, I kind of struggled to figure out what exactly to do, especially as it wasn't altogether clear how the game was really scored and what could be a succesful strategy, but I'm absolutely willing to give it another shot.

**

I like the miniatures, but I have to admit that the grey character models do look a bit drab. The obvious thing to do is paint them! I've decided I will do this in the order that the factions win in; in other words, I'm painting Saxony first since they won our first game. The Saxon leader, Günther, is a fairly basic comedy German type with a greatcoat and spiky helmet, and since I have the relevant German military colors from the Vallejo range to hand, I think this will be a fairly simple undertaking. So I figured I might as well paint the mechs while I'm at it.

The first step was gluing some very tiny-grained sand from an ancient Woodland Scenics set to the bases, and spraypainting everything white. The mechs got a base coat of Gunmetal Grey, and a Black Glaze wash to bring out the crevices between the panels and dull the shine of the metal. I then painted the fighting compartment Medium Sea Grey, and made little German crosses with Off White and Black. I'm looking for a sort of combination of a military vehicle look and the dieselpunk style of the game art, and I think I've done okay.

As for Günther, I took my lead from Warlord's Finnish paint scheme, which I quite liked and which is, after all, based on German uniforms. So Günther's tunic is in Medium Sea Grey, the boots and Pickelhaube are black, and his belt and holster are Chocolate Brown. The inside of his overcoat is Dark Red, and the outside is German Fieldgrey; his face is Basic Skintone and the beard and hair are Light Grey with some Neutral Grey spots. Nacht got a coat of Black Grey, with some German Grey on his back, although I'm not sure it's possible to tell! His eyes are Silver Grey. As the least interesting character in the base game, Günther is very much the archetypical cruel German, and I've tried to capture that here.

Finally, I painted the bases Tan Earth, gave them a brown ink wash, and sprinkled some tiny flock over them. The edges were done in their faction color: black. Saxony is now ready to take the field again!

**

In our next game, I was Agricultural Crimea, and I got off to a decent start.

I even got into it a bit with the Soviets at the Factory, kicking out their mech, and soon enough Saxony launched an all-out attack through the tunnels.

We withstood the blitz, but soon afterwards the Soviets won by grabbing the Factory.

Two games in, I feel like I'm still struggling with the pace of the game. I managed to score several stars, but then fell way behind and finished second to last. I think I have to try pursuing those stars a lot more aggressively in the future.

**

So, next up, I'm painting the Soviets. I love the boxy mechs with their scythe arms, but I have to admit, I'm not looking forward to painting a Siberian tiger!

The mechs were easy enough to paint: I have some Camo Olive Green, which I think is the recommended color for Soviet tanks, so in keeping with what I did with the Saxons, I painted the fighting compartment in the appropriate tank color and the legs and guns in Gunmetal Grey. I decided to paint the scythes Brass and am very happy with the result. Finally, I added some big red stars.

Above, the tiger has a base coat of German Camo Orange Ochre on top and Off-white along the bottom. I thought Siberian tigers would be orange, or maybe white and grey like a snow leopard, but the Wikipedia page tells me they're more yellow or even red. Below I've done a light drybrush in Dark Sand and stripes in German Camo Black Brown. Olga is wearing a Basalt Grey fur hat and a Black Grey coat; the metal bits on the mechs have been given a wash of Black Glaze and Smoke.

Here's the finished product!

**

With two factions painted, it's time to give some serious thought to how I'm going to store these miniatures. The plastic packaging that came with the game is great - as long as you don't paint the miniatures! A foam insert can also damage paintwork, and hell, I want to show these off. As it happens, we've got some transparent plastic chocolate boxes that are pretty much perfectly sized for two Scythe factions. So what I did is I cut out two sheets of cardboard to a size where they"ll fit on the bottom of the box. I then cut holes into one sheet for my Saxons' and Soviets' bases, and lined the holes with brown felt.

It sure ain't pretty! My original idea was that the models would go in the holes, but they're not quite big enough, so actually the bases are going to rest on the felt. This is fine, as it'll protect the edges of the bases from wear as well. Then I stuck another piece of cardboard on top and glued some ballast onto it.

It still ain't pretty! But with a paint job of Tan Earth and brown ink, it matches the bases of my painted models and holds them more or less in place, like so:

**

Finally, we tried another four-player game with a player new to our group, but who had played Scythe before. Nobody ended up getting Saxony, but at least my newly-painted Soviets would hit the board.

I found myself playing Engineering Poland, and decided to really go for those stars this time. Also I really like the white mechs!

Of course, everyone else was also going for it, and apart from the Crimeans, who ended up kind of bottled up in their starting territories, we played a surprisingly aggressive game! By which I mean there was just one single combat, but especially the Soviet player was quite assertive in taking over territory, and we all racked up quite a lot of stars. Incidentally, I thought Olga and the Soviet mechs looked great on the board!

Eventually, it was the Nordic player who got the sixth star, and the win. Even though we took a moment to go through the rules and didn't play with any particular sense of urgency, we still got through a complete four-player game where everybody got a lot done in under three hours!

So what this means is that I now have to paint a musk ox.

But that's one for next time!

**

A verdict, then. I like Scythe, although perhaps not as much as I might have expected to given how much it's been hyped up. It's paced a lot faster than most comparable games, I think, and that did throw me off quite a bit at first. But it also means that even though this is a fairly complex game, you can still easily get through it in an evening, and that's definitely a good thing!

I do kind of feel that there's some complexity for the sake of complexity here, or at least some features that could just be dropped from the game without really affecting it. The encounter cards don't really add a huge amount to the game, but I don't mind them at all because the art is simply gorgeous. But things like the structure bonus tile, which provides a triflingly small amount of coins for particular placements of buildings, barely seems worth the effort at all. I assume some of these things, like the slightly convoluted scoring system, are there to try to obscure who's winning, and it's decently succesful. But especially for new players, there's quite a lot to take in, and I'm not sure it's all actually worthwhile. There also isn't perhaps as much player interaction as I might have liked, because to an extent everyone is building their own resource engine; although this may well be different with higher player counts.

Having said all this, I'm pretty sure we're going to end up playing more Scythe! I think several other people in our little gaming group like it more than I do, and I'm quite happy to play it with them. It's just that I think I've had more fun painting the miniatures than I have playing the game! We'll definitely be trying the Invaders from Afar expansion, which raises the maximum player count to seven, because that's definitely something I want to experience. In the mean time, if you're at all into the idea of a very pretty engine-building strategy game with really nice miniatures, I think you'll find Scythe well worth your money.

Now I'm off to plan some 28mm mechs...

Let's Read Tolkien 66: The Siege of Gondor

Pippin was roused by Gandalf.

Meanwhile, at Minas Tirith, Peregin is waiting on Lord Denethor. As the city prepares to defend itself against Sauron, the Steward of Gondor argues with Gandalf and bullies Faramir, who brings news of Frodo for Denethor to bicker with Gandalf and abuse Faramir over. The enemy is coming, though, so Denethor browbeats Faramir into heading back out to command the defense of Osgiliath, all the while complaining about how he wishes Faramir had died instead of Boromir. I mean to be honest, Denethor is just a complete asshole.

Soon enough, Sauron launches his assault, and Faramir is badly wounded leading the retreat. Denethor finally snaps and orders a pyre built for him and Faramir, and Pippin runs off to find Gandalf. The chapter ends very dramatically with the Witch-king blasting open the gate of the city with magic (and a battering ram), and confronting Gandalf as the horns of the Riders of Rohan sound in the distance.

**

So here we are: the War of the Ring is definitely underway. Tolkien isn't very interested in the practicalities of warfare, and I'm grateful: fictional military history is invariably murderously boring. Sauron's armies advance through sheer attrition, and psychological warfare is far more important to the narrative than maneuver or stratagem.

A more interesting military practicality that's missing here is the barrack-room: although Peregrin is now a soldier in the army of Gondor, he only really interacts with Beregond. We barely get any glimpse at all of anyone else or what they get up to in their spare time. Of course this is partly because of Pippin's unusual duties, and admittedly I only ever spent a very brief time in uniform, but I still think it's a little weird that he leads such a solitary existence. Tolkien, of course, was an officer, who earlier referred to soldiers as "Uruk-hai", so it doesn't seem much of a stretch to suppose that barrack-room life was alien and repulsive to him and therefore elided. For particular contrast, look at the descriptions of barracks life in the Deed of Paksennarion by Elizabeth Moon, who was a US Marine.

As in the previous Gondor chapter, the shadow of war is very strongly present, this time even more literally: the sun is completely obscured. The Nazgûl fly around screaming and wear down morale even before Sauron's armies actually show up. They cross the Anduin: "in secret they have long been building floats and barges in great number", echoing both Napoléon's and Hitler's planned invasions of Britain with masses of smallcraft.

I can't entirely decide if the decision to defend the walls of Rammas Echor and the crossings at Osgiliath was a mistake or not. Faramir points out that even if they lose one man to the enemy's ten, they're still the losers of the exchange, which is undoubtedly true. Delaying actions are among the most difficult military operations, and I'm not even really sure how you'd actually go about fighting one with essentially medieval infantry against a massive horde of orcs. Still, though, Rohan only shows up in the nick of time, so arguably had the enemy not been delayed, they would have been too late.

Thematically, the strongest contrast in the chapter is between Denethor and Gandalf. Where Gandalf has throughout been humane and compassionate, Denethor is spiteful and abusive, especially of Faramir, who he practically drives to his death. I'll talk more about Denethor at the denouement of his story, but in the military history vein, I wonder if there's some commentary here on British military leadership in the Great War. Pippin misunderstands Gandalf's report of the Witch-king of Angmar and thinks that Sauron himself is coming, and Denethor laughs this off, pointing out - quite correctly - that Sauron acts through others, and will only show up to gloat when the battle is over. Gandalf, meanwhile, visits the soldiers on the ramparts (very directly analogous with trenches here!), and leads the cavalry sortie - while for all his boasting about his sword and hauberk, Denethor hides away in a tower, snipes and moans and complains, and eventually abandons his duties completely. So he, like Sauron, also sends others to do his work.

The obvious contrast between Gandalf and Denethor is that one has faith while the other despairs, but one leads by example and personal touch, while the other hides away in the rear. No 20th-century general really "led from the front" - when Erwin Rommel went charging about in his command vehicle, he effectively abandoned overall command to his tremendously competent staff officers - but British generals of the Great War received heavy criticism from some quarters for setting up in luxurious chateaus far from the front line and commanding by missives from their comfortable surroundings, entirely detached from the reality of the front. I don't recall Tolkien commenting on this in his letters, but now that I was thinking about this chapter in military history terms, the thought occurred to me that Denethor and Gandalf do have very distinct leadership styles, and there is a possible analogy to the First World War there.

**

Next time: horses.

Let's Play Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War

Warhammer video games have always been a very mixed bag. The first one I ever played was the 1993 version of Space Hulk. It was really good, incredibly atmospheric and quite difficult. Later I got Space Crusade (1992), which was very faithful to the board game and is still quite good fun today. Another really good nineties Warhammer game was Shadow of the Horned Rat (1995(!)). These are the only GW-based video games I remember playing in the last millenium, and they were good! Given how expensive the hobby is and how hard games were to come by, I spent way more time with Warhammer video games in the nineties than I ever did with any of the physical products.

Since then, though, things have been different: I've gotten a lot more miniature gaming done, and most Games Workshop-licensed games in the 21st century have just been bad. For some reason, GW policy seems to be to work with relatively small and inexperienced developers, and the result is that the games they produce are at best mediocre. The one I've played the most has to be Cyanide's Blood Bowl (2009) and the 2015 sequel, both of which are fairly competent renditions of the board game that are let down by the horrendous AI, which is among the worst I've ever seen in a video game. Needless to say I wasn't too keen to try their take on Space Hulk.

The only first-decade Warhammer game worth anyone's time is Dawn of War (2004). I've been partial to a good RTS since Warcraft, and Dawn of War is not just an excellent RTS but a really good Warhammer game as well.

Of course, the game is fifteen years old, so the graphics haven't necessarily aged well. Especially the cutscenes.

But the game itself is still very good fun, and I'd encourage anyone who hasn't tried it to give it a shot. Here's a screenshot from my Marine campaign, showing part of my army blasting open the door to a Chaos temple.

Why they decided to ditch most of the proper RTS stuff from the sequels I'll never understand. Anyway, last year I would still have said that Dawn of War was the only 21st century Warhammer 40,000 game anyone should bother with. Then I bought the memorably awkwardly named Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War, and realized that I was wrong.

**

Gladius has been called a 4X game, and while that's technically accurate, I feel it's a bit misleading. In pretty much every 4X game I've ever played, the combat system has been the weakest part of the game, possibly coming in shared last with diplomacy. Gladius does 4X exactly the other way round: it's fundamentally a hex-based wargame with 4X elements that completely dispenses with diplomacy. I mean it's Warhammer; you're not going to sit down and negotiate with the Orks. It works brilliantly.

There are four factions in the base game: Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Orks and Necrons. I got started with the Marines. Their infantry is fairly durable, so maybe I won't get wiped out straight away, and unlike the other factions, they can only ever have one city. For everybody else, there's a Civ-like mechanic where the more cities they have, the less efficient they are; the Marines get a larger city radius to compensate for not being able to found more. I feel like this will make it easier to try to understand how cities work.

The Marine chapter is never identified, but they're video game protagonist Marines who seem entirely too comfortable making use of alien artifacts of unknown origin, so I'm just going to assume they're Blood Ravens. You can customize them to the extent of choosing a faction color, which is a bit disappointing. Above is the very first turn of my Medium difficulty playthrough: I have two squads of Tactical Marines, and I need to pick a spot for my city.

I've highlighted the hex immediately below my southernmost squad. It's a Grox pasture, which is a special resource hex that produces food. When you move a unit onto a special resource hex, it becomes an outpost that provides a defensive bonus and some resources. You only get the full bonus if the hex is inside a city radius; since Marines find this difficult, they can deploy a Fortress of Redemption that gets them the full bonus, and sounds like somewhere Superman goes when he's become a little too fond of drinking.

Above you can see a couple more map features. The orange dashed line is a cliff; the hexes have varying altitudes and ground troops can't cross if the difference is too high. They're also damn near impossible to see on the isometric map, and you have to go turn on the dashed lines separately in the settings. Do! The green glowy hex is a Necron tomb, which has no impact on other factions, but Necrons can only found cities on tombs. The red stuff is wire weed, which stops movement and does damage to units that start their turn in it. So there's a lot going on on the map, but it's really pretty easy to grasp.

The early game is usually spent exploring and fighting off the local wildlife. This "wildlife" ranges from fairly harmless (well, to a Space Marine) Kroot hounds to terrifying Kastelan robots that can wipe out entire squads of Marines with ease. Below, the squad I sent north has spotted some Neophyte Hybrids, a kind of Genestealer Cultist that doesn't put up much of a fight. I decided to be brave and go exterminate the xenos. Tactical Marines are armed with bolters that have a range of two hexes but are much more lethal at close range, so we'll move in and attack.

...only to walk right into a Kastellan's overwatch fire. If a unit hasn't attacked in the previous turn, it can fire overwatch if some moron stumbles into its field of vision like my Marines just did. It's a miracle they weren't all killed.

Below is where we ended up: my Marines are holed up in an outpost, surrounded by various xenos menaces. The first part of the game really gives you the feeling that you're fighting to survive on a hostile planet. The various cultists and giant insects and so on are mostly a nuisance; the Catachan Devils are a lot more dangerous; and you're going to need to research and deploy heavy weapons, if not tanks, to clear out the robots.

The thing is, the combat system in Gladius is intelligently done. Drawing directly on Warhammer means that each faction and the neutrals have distinct units with particular strengths and weaknesses. I needed the long-range armament of Devastator Marines to deal with the Kastellans, but devastators can't take a lot of damage; vehicles like the Predator tank have resilience and firepower, but struggle with infantry. You need to use combined arms and at the same time try to preserve your forces, since units gain experience but obviously lose it if they're wiped out. Devastators, for instance, become absolutely lethal at higher experience levels - if you can keep them alive.

A particular highlight of the Marine forces are the heroes. They can absorb ridiculous amounts of damage, especially when you've invested some influence and kitted them out properly at a Jokaero encampment.

Especially the Terminator Chaplain is an absolute beast. I got serious Vader Down vibes putting them up against entire armies of Orks and Necrons. I mean they wouldn't get much done, but hordes of enemies would break on them and be wiped out by my firepower. Very satisfying!

I now also have warm feelings for the Thunderfire Cannon, which doubles as a terrain-clearing unit and healer because of the accompanying Tech-Marine. If only they had the tremor shells in Gladius.

You can win the game by either wiping out your enemies, or finishing your faction's quest, which consists of a series of missions. I've only tried the Marine quest, but I thought it was quite well done and led to a very satisfying conclusion.

Another thing that makes combat in Gladius excellent is that the terrain really makes a difference. In this game, there was a lava field north of my city, which gradually changed into a desert to the east. At the east end of the desert was the Ork capital, so armor was at a premium here. Below is a shot of my defensive line in the desert: the Terminators are putting the finishing touch on the last Gorkanaut survivor of the Ork attack.

If you look closely, you can see some Land Raiders, which reveals that I already bought the very inexpensive Reinforcement Pack DLC after my first playthrough. It's worth the price for the Land Raider alone.

By contrast, to the south of my city was a narrow, thickly wooded isthmus, where I slugged it out with the Necrons. They had already eliminated the Imperial Guard completely by the time I made contact: the AI will fight other AI factions very energetically!

Whereas my eastern lines were anchored around Land Raiders and Predators, to the south it was Terminators, Vindicators and indirect fire. The Necrons, however, were devilishly clever enough to open a second front by flying across the water to the southeast. Here's a very satisfying picture of one of our Predators sinking a Necron Monolith.

Eventually I managed to finish the Marine quest, so I've now won on Easy and Medium, and lost once on Medium. Luckily, there's still a lot to do and several difficulty levels to attempt, and there are even new factions being added; I bought the Tyranids DLC to see if I get eaten by the Hive Mind next time around. But this has been great fun, and I'm looking forward to more.

**

The only negatives of my Gladius experience so far have been that I'm getting too old to spend an entire day sitting in front of a computer, and that between Gladius and Munchkin 40k, Necrons are starting to grow on me. I still dislike the way they were shoehorned into the existing fluff, but if I ignore that and just treat them as Chaos Androids who now have their own pseudo-Egyptian army, I'm actually kinda starting to like them. I mean they have cool spiders and everything.

Anyway all of this is to say that if you like any combination of Warhammer and war games, I think you'll find Gladius to be worth your time and money next time it's on sale on Steam. As Warhammer video games go, it's right up there with Dawn of War.

Let's Read Tolkien 65: The Muster of Rohan

Now all roads were running together to the East to meet the coming of war and the onset of the Shadow.

With everyone else gone, Merry is left hanging out with Théoden King and the Riders of Rohan. They make their way through picturesque mountain valleys to Dunharrow, where the army of Rohan is mustering. Éowyn reports that Aragorn has come and gone, and everyone is sad because they figure he's been eaten by ghosts. Merry waits on Théoden at dinner and gets to ask about the Paths of the Dead, and is told an old story about how they're haunted. Then a herald arrives from Gondor with the Red Arrow, officially requesting help from Rohan as soon as possible.

So the army of Rohan is mustered, but Merry is told he can't go to war with them, since he can't actually ride a horse. However, he's accosted by a young Rider of Rohan who introduces themself as Dernhelm, and offers to give Merry a ride in secret. So they set off for Gondor.

**

This is actually something of a rarity in the Lord of the Rings: a solo chapter. Merry is the only member of the Fellowship present during the action. I think the Choices of Master Samwise is the only other one, unless I'm forgetting something.

It's also a surprisingly melancholy little chapter. Merry is sad that he's on his own; everyone is gloomy about Aragorn going on his big adventure, and nobody's exactly excited about going to war either. There's some pretty geography and some old lore, but mostly everything is just sad. A far cry from orc-killing contests! War comes across as very somber and depressing here.

**

Next time: Pippin gets into a fight.