Ticalla Jungle is a terrain expansion for Heroscape, similar to Thaelenk Tundra and the Road to the Forgotten Forest. I was a little concerned about it inititially, because all it contains are three trees and six bushes—it seemed very unlikely that such a small selection of foliage would make any kind of significant difference to a typical Heroscape layout. Thankfully, and rather wonderfully, I was mistaken. Ticalla Jungle is a fantastic expansion, perfectly sized and very fairly priced. It seems stupid to gush over a set of plastic trees, but seriously—this set is awesome.

Let’s consider looks first: I was initially worried that nine pieces would be too few to make the board look good—that it would just look sparse and deforested, instead of all cool and jungle-y—but it ends up looking very good indeed. It’s a nice balance of trees and open spaces, and because the heights of the trees and bushes are not all uniform it gives the battlefield an appropriately organic look. The trees and bushes themselves are also very nice-looking individually, with a leafy, layered look that works really well. Certainly these trees look endlessly better than the pine trees from Road to the Forgotten Forest, which aren’t bad to begin with. But regardless of how good the trees look on they’re own, the important part is the overall effect they have on the battlefield, and again I have to say that the effect is excellent. If you want your terrain to look three-dimensional and interesting, grab a set of Ticalla Jungle; you won’t be disappointed.

Next we’ll look at the tactical considerations the set adds to your game, because Heroscape is, after all, a game. Heroscape’s very liberal line-of sight system is very wargame-y, following the classic table-top idea of “if I can see you, I can shoot you.” That works very well in hobby games like Warhammer and Warmachine, where you can make your own terrain, but it’s less effective in the stylized world of modern games such as Heroscape and Heroclix. A set of nine trees and bushes is not enough to actually hide behind—most figures, from almost any vantage point, will still have a clear line of sight to you no matter how hard you try. Ticalla Jungle answers this problem with an appropriately stylized rule: if you are adjacent to a tree or bush, you get an extra defense die every time you are attacked from range. While this can get kind of silly when the tree doesn’t actually interpose between the two figures, it ends up working quite well overall and makes the trees more tactically meaningful than you would expect (especially when you consider that most squad units just have two or three defense dice anyway—one extra free one is a big boost). You end up with a very nice sense of shooting through brush and running cover, and too many trees would actually spoil this effect. Once again, the size of the set ends up being very appropriate, with just right amount of effect on the battlefield.

All this talk of good set size is not intended to say that you will never have need for more than one set—my nine trees work really well with my two-master set terrain collection, but I recently added a third master set and I’m thinking I might want a second set of jungle trees to help keep up with the growth. Players with more (and there are many players with much, much more) might want to invest in a handful of jungle sets.

Along with the trees comes a trio of spiders, who I saved until last because they’re pretty peripheral—people are going to buy this for the trees, but the spiders are an okay bonus. They are not especially awesome, but they bond with the giant bug from the new Large Expansion Set, who is especially awesome, so that makes them that much better. Because they are common squad figures, and because they get better in multiples, they seem perfectly designed for the people who buy a ton of jungle sets and play all their spiders together: you get a ton of free turns with your giant bug, and you might (maybe) slow down the other team with a bunch of extra spider webs from your massive swarm. With just one squad, though, I was underwhelmed.

I would love to give this set a perfect score, and I almost did: it adds so much to the game, and does it so well, that it really is a foundational shift in the way we play Heroscape. If the spiders were a little more useful, this would be a six-clock review, but I’m almost supernaturally stingy with my 6-clock scores, and I’m limiting myself in this case to 5.5. But keep in mind that 5.5 is defined in our review guidelines as “perfect,” so this is still a glowing review—Ticalla Jungle is an excellent expansion to a very fun game, and I recommend it very highly.

Designer: Lawrence H. Harris
Publisher: Avalon Hill

The Battle of the Bulge is an interesting battle to recreate: historically the Allies were more or less helpless in the beginning, yet the Axis had no reasonable chance of winning in the end. In fact, it was never really a matter of winning at all; both sides were really just engaged in a struggle to not lose first. The board game addresses this historical quirk by diverging from the typical Axis & Allies “conquer everything” formula and embracing a carefully balanced time limit instead: the Axis has a huge troop advantage, and must find a way to leverage it across eight turns and gain a bunch of victory points. If the Axis can take the same cities as the historical Axis army, or more, they win; if they can’t, the Allies win. It’s a precarious balance, and the first few times you play you’ll think they got it wrong, but stick with it—the game is calibrated to an astonishingly delicate edge, and two players of equal skill will find it to be a fantastic battle of wits.

In many ways, Battle of the Bulge has no business being an Axis & Allies game at all: it has a hex map instead of a territorial board; it uses a fascinating system of battlefield supply instead of the classic A&A economy; and it uses an innovative combat system that bears no resemblance to anything A&A has ever done before. But these are not just changes for change’s sake—every one of these new ideas, and many others, end up working perfectly with the game’s theme and purpose, and many of the mechanics are downright better than the original A&A stuff.

We’ll begin with set up, which is as easy as it could possibly be: the map spaces include little diagrams to tell you exactly how to establish each army’s starting position, so you just place them and go. Because there are only eight turns, each set of reinforcements is similarly scripted—you get exactly the same units, in the same turns, in each game. The strategy comes from where you place those reinforcements and how you direct them—and, most importantly, how you choose to supply them.

You see, there are two new kinds of unit in the game now, in addition to the infantry, tanks, artillery, and planes of classic A&A. The first new unit is really a resource, though you play it and move it on the board like a unit. This is called Supply, and it’s what lets you do everything: if you want to attack or move from one space to another, you must spend a supply token in the same or an adjacent space. The second new unit is the Truck, which is your primary method of getting your Supply where and when you need it. The Axis doesn’t get nearly enough Supply to do everything they need to do, but they can capture it from the Allies, who get way too much; learning how to supply your army without inadvertently supplying the enemy with an undefended cache is one of the deepest strategies in the game.

Combat is completely different, but very clever and cool; I’d love to see this combat system applied as the engine for another game with a wider scope. The first thing you’ll notice is that there is no return fire: when one space attacks another it is an entirely one-sided affair, which sounds harsh but actually works quite well. Each army takes turns activating one hex to attack an adjacent one, and this back and forth across the battle line simulates return fire fairly well without having to use any awkward “these guys are dead but they can still shoot” rules. The next thing you’ll notice about the combat is that you can no longer pick and choose who dies in each assault—the game uses a set of pull-out tabs and 12-sided dice to determine exactly how many units are hit, which units they are, and whether they die or retreat. It sounds complex, but the actual execution is remarkably simple.

The pieces in the game are the standard pieces you expect from Axis & Allies, so the production values are pretty high overall, but the board is dull and colorless and really could have been more interesting. My only other major complaint are the front line markers—keeping track of the battle line is an interesting idea, and in theory it fits very well with this game, but in practice it means you spend way too much time reaching into tight spaces and moving markers and pieces that insist on getting in each other’s way. After a game or two we eliminated the markers altogether and just kept track of the territory in our heads; it was extra bookkeeping, but the ability to simply slide an army from one space to another without having to lift it over a cardboard battle line was well worth the mental effort.

Overall, Battle of the Bulge earns high marks for fun and innovation, taking it’s place as the best A&A game since the first (and arguably better than that one, for wargame fans who find classic A&A too silly). It’s a new, exciting game with an obvious depth of playtesting, and should be loved by light wargamers and history buffs alike.

First off is the new starter, which is an interesting change from previous starters (the last one was with Revenge of the Sith back in early 2005) which had started out with Rebel Storm and Clone Strike being simple boxes that were just bigger boosters in look. Then with Revenge of the Sith Wizards moved to making the starters like a board game in look with a very nice box (that I still have and use) and a map on a hard board much like Monopoly or any other board game.

It’s been quite a while since my last look at Star Wars Miniatures and even longer since Wizards has released a starter for the game so with the release of Alliance and Empire, Star Wars RPG: Saga Edition and a new Starter I thought this would be a good time to see how things have changed in the past two years. The rules haven’t changed, which shows how solid the games core rules are, since the first set came out and as I dislike re-reviewing stuff that hasn’t changed I’m not going to cover that in this article, if you’re not familiar with the rules then feel free to read the review of the original set in which I cover that ground.

I’ve been holding off doing single figure reviews for any miniature game for quite some time. I’ve never cared for discussing one single unit out of hundreds because most of the time the figures by themselves aren’t all that cool or interesting--only when you combine them with other figures where each can play off of each other’s abilities can you really see how useful a unit really is.