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Last night I went to Shannon's house to play "Attack!", which is a wargame made by Eagle Games. Like their other games, it has hundreds of little plastic miniature pieces, a solid game board, and good looking rules. Surprisingly, the rules were well written and I had only one question when reading them -- either people exaggerate that poorly written rules or Eagle Games has done a better job with later games.

It's more or less a Risk-like game, with eight different unit types (four land and four sea) as well as resource cards. You're still basically building up armies and attacking each other, diplomacy being limited to trying to sway neutral territories to your side. There is an "Attack! Expansion" that adds another mapboard (taken together both mapboards cover the whole Earth), more units and more rules.
Chris Van Horn had his ups and downs during the game. For some reason he expected me to be more aggressive about attacking Shannon, who was only slightly ahead at the time. I'm just happy building my own little kingdom and staying put, which is why I like being able to take over countries diplomatically. I didn't start a fight until my last turn. Of course by then I only had about a 1/3rd chance of winning -- but that's better than most games where I lay back.

Meanwhile Chris is getting beaten up by Shannon and Chris Allen. The problem with Van Horn is that he talks too much, especially when he feels a bit threatened. Also, he attacks people based on offhand comments. It's a strategy that can work often, but it can also backfire. And when it was backfiring last night he got a bit snippy with the other players. But it was only momentary, after the game he was back to his cheery self.
Copyright (c) 2003 Kevin C. Wong
Page Created: December 18, 2003 Page Last Updated: December 18, 2003