Thanks to this series I became interested in finding out what this BCS craze is all about. I am 6 or 7 videos into a 30+ video playthrough of The Last Blitzkrieg. I am hooked. I love that you have to fight as a formation and not just shoving units all over the board willy nilly. Since game wise, I am about Bulged out, I am thinking about either Brazen Chariots (North Africa which I am currently playing through with 6mm miniatures) or Arracourt. That will be my next purchase.
Finally only one left standing! That was a fun series, I have to admit I voted for the old games as very few of the new games are interesting to me but it was fun. Once the old games got eliminated I just made my votes random since I did not knew much about each games. You should try a Gettysburg tourney and if Gettysburg 88 from Avalon Hill doesn’t win I will be devastated 😊
Sorry for the slow reply. A Gettysburg tourney would be both fun and ... expensive. I only have two Gettysburg games at the moment. (A Most Fearful Sacrifice & the old Avalon Hill version).
Thanks, Zilla. This series inspired me to get my EA:A back on the table. I'm playing Allied Solo, and I'm deep into it now. Glad to see how well Mr. Butterfield's game did! Looking forward to your next series.
Well done. This was a great series. I want more. LOL. This is a great way to expose people to more games out there. I didn't even know about some of these titles (Celles, The Ardennes Offensive). I bought two games due to this competition (Celles, WWII Commander: Battle of the Bulge). Honestly, Ardennes 44 wasn't even on my radar until your series. Now I'll have to consider it. I vote for a D-Day Off for your next video series.
D-Day is a great choice, yes, although I'm thinking my next one might be a bit smaller one, where I play the games too. While I don't really need the games in hand to do the contest, I feel like going through the components and playing them during or after is somehow important to do, and the budget doesn't really allow for collecting big sets too regularly. :)
Thanks Doug! These are all great ideas for categories, thanks for the suggestions. I'm actually working on a comparison of WW2 tactical systems at the moment, but it's more like a year-long project, as I want to play them. They also take time to learn. :)
The two battles that have a bagillion versions are Waterloo and Gettysburg. But as a Bulgist, i am SO glad you did this. And, yes, Ardennes ‘44 is the best game on the battle.
Yeah, it would be an adventure to do Gettsyburg, for sure! It'd be great fun to do, but wow, narrowing it done would be challenging and getting the games would be trickier. I suppose I could do it without the game, but I feel it's important to have them on hand and to eventually play them.@@HernandezTony
Okay. I totally understand that Gettysburg and Waterloo are the “big boys” with too many games to even count. Literally. Why don’t you, then, do another popular, but not so big battle? Just one that comes off the top of my head and could EASILY be replicated like this one would be Operation Market Garden 🎉
I like the Market Garden idea more and more. Most designers who touched on Second Ardennes also made a Market Garden games. As a bonus, some’ll use the same systems so it won’t be that big a hill to learn either. Just like there’s “Nuts!” (🤣 ) like me with the Bulge, there are tons of dudes who live and breath Market Garden 🪴
Really did enjoy this concept and look fwd to seeing more of these for other genres. Maybe with the poll once you have closed the poll officially you can just edit the post and add a POLL CLOSED to the top?
Ah, yes, I could post a POLL CLOSED there, for sure. It's kind of fun to see how it morphs over time, though. Maybe in a few years it'll have 1k votes? :)
Thanks, yes, that's exactly my thinking. If we picked 4 games and did a short playthrough on each one, people could vote on the one they liked. It'd probably also give people more information if they were thinking on buying a particular game too.
Nothing gets people talking and engaging like a good honest competition! Excellent series, and brought to my attention a number of games that I hadn't seen before. There are so many possibilities for similar events in the future - you could even extend it to PC games.
The idea actually kind of came from the PC games side, after doing a similar series on the Second Gear channel asking people to vote on all the different states for American Truck Simulator. Single elimination, and Texas got voted as the best state in the simulation. :)
This series was great. Inspired me to get my first Bulge game (Worthington), which I've subsequently played 4 times, and is still on the table. I'm looking forward to where the next iteration or evolution of this goes. Someone suggested a "have not played" option on the polls, which is an interesting idea, and could be revealing and change the outcome of the voting.
Thanks! I like the idea of the "have not played" option. I can see that at the very least being helpful, and shouldn't really change the voting for the games involved. I think it makes sense to do that going forward. :) And I hope you like the Worthington game! I think it's one of the more accessible games in the series, and can be played in a single sitting, which is nice.
Ha! My pleasure, Aaron. Yes, it was interesting to read people's comments and insights on the games and what was happening and why. Fun times, I'm looking forward to the next one. Thanks for participating. :)
Really good fun with some surprises along the way. So may choices for further battles and audience participation, ACW might be interesting with so may games out there. Many thanks for the entertainment.
Very interesting. I must admit my difficulties in select one game over the other. Looking forward to your next "championship". I liked your closing remarks and brought one important aspect aspect: data. The games have different aspects that are preferred by players: super-games, solitaire playability, game mechanics, historical recreation, etc. Maybe its possible to group categories so the data would be a way to "guide" others on games never played. Lastly, I suggest one category for voting: "never played"; certainly would give us something to consider. I haven't played some of the selections so it was hard to make comparisons. There are a few that I'm trying to obtain to play myself and understand the appeal of them. Keep up the good work and looking forward to your videos. Thank you.
I like the "never played" vote, yes. To a degree we tease that out by the number of votes per matchup, but it might be a nice option to include going forward. And for sure, there could be different ways to group these other than by battle. Doing one on solitaire games would be fun, but wow, would it be contentious! :)
After watching the BCS videos and playing Salerno 43, I think Ardennes 44 won due to its relative simplicity to play compared the TLB. That's a monster to leave set up and play without getting kicked off the kitchen table.
Hmmm. A tactical Air War Solo Games series might be interesting. I can think of a half dozen off the top of my head, and I have most of them already. Lots of potential here, for sure.
Interesting competition - no Last Gamble (Hobby Japan) by Danny Parker as unable to find. This was re-done by 3W as Hitler's Last Gamble with lots of errata. Also by Danny Parker was Dark December (OSG) which was not featured. The precursor to Bitter Woods was The Last Blitzkrieg from Michael Smith.
I think a lot of the factors for this final match going to Ardennes 44 is most likely the smaller footprint, less numbers of counters and the ease of play of the ZOC bond system.
Don't get me wrong the BCS is not overly hard but you have a lot more to activate in a given turn than you do Ardennes 44. Last Blitzkrieg is battalion scale and Ardennes 44 is largely division scale right?@@ZillaBlitz
I really enjoyed this "Bulge off" Series! The reason i didn't vote was because i don't own a Bulge game yet. But i watched with great interest. Thank you
As you were discussing all the things that went into rating a game, and all the factors that went into deciding which game was better, until a final decision was made, it became obvious to me that we should skin Arms Trade Tycoon, and create a Wargames Tournament Tycoon!😄
I backed silver and bronze throughout. Quite glad they never came up against one another as I couldn't choose - they are very different games. Congrats to the winner - I don't own it but have a couple of the '44 games and they are very good. It's just that three Bulge games would be a game too far!. I can see this being expanded - Normandy, Market Garden, PTO, North Africa etc
Yes, it would have been interesting to see some of the other matchups, for sure. And most definitely, I'm looking forward to trying some more of these with different areas. :)
Yup, want more of a 4 game series play-through so I have more of an idea what I am voting for. With You-Tube limiting it to 4 choices in a poll, you could START with 4 polls of 4 each in the selected category--like Barbarossa--to pare down to the 4 you actually play. (In effect, YOU decide the sweet 16 and WE decide the final 4. Then WE decide the rank of those 4 after you play them.) ~~~ As an aside, I played my original '65 AH Battle of the Bulge solo because of this series. The Germans won in a rout the 1st time. Thought about a couple of things the US could try and played again--and the Germans basically reversed their combat luck on the opening few turns compared to that first game and just completely stalled out. No need to use what I thought the US might need to do as the Germans weren't going anywhere.
I like the variation of going from 16 to 4, then doing playthroughs on those 4. Or do 8 to 4 and then doing playthroughs on the 4. Something like that. And that's awesome that it inspired you to play your '65 Bulge! I'm always happiest when people are playing games because of something on the channel. :)
And Danny Parker's Battle of the Bulge game is set to release soon...The Last Gamble. Hmmm... 🤔...well, a tip of the ole' hat to you ZB, great great fun watching this all unfold...but...dare I say the word ..."re-match"... for Danny Parker's The Last Gamble...?😜
Ha! Yes, I have that one on pre-order so I'm excited to check it out. Maybe next year we take the 4 semi-finalists and the new Bulge game and do monthly focus of some sort. I do want to play many of these games during the upcoming year too. :)
11 месяцев назад+1
Would like to play a game with BC's map & Ardennes 2 counters. Love the Last Blitzkreig map.
Eastern Front would be really fun. The next one will probably be a smaller scale though, because I want to play the games and assembling big fields of games is tricky expense-wise.
I hope to do something like that for next December. At the moment though I've got a lot of games in the queue, and it will take a while to learn and play all 3 of these. :)
I enjoyed the tournament. Not surprised that "44 won although that system just doesn't work for me. I understand that it is very popular. Maybe I just have too many sets of rules bouncing around after 50 years of gaming.
This may not be the place for this but I wanted to get it out to you Its a tank battle between a Ger Panther and a US Pershing during the battle of Koln,
That was a lot of fun. Thanks Zilla....more of this style of video please!
Thanks, Custard. I most definitely want to make more content like this. :)
Thanks to this series I became interested in finding out what this BCS craze is all about. I am 6 or 7 videos into a 30+ video playthrough of The Last Blitzkrieg. I am hooked. I love that you have to fight as a formation and not just shoving units all over the board willy nilly.
Since game wise, I am about Bulged out, I am thinking about either Brazen Chariots (North Africa which I am currently playing through with 6mm miniatures) or Arracourt.
That will be my next purchase.
Oh, very nice! I hope you enjoy the series. I've heard that Arracourt is a good starting spot. That is now on my Shelf of Shame Challenge.
Love BCS, have been seriously hooked on it for the last seven years, great system and so much fun.
Finally only one left standing!
That was a fun series, I have to admit I voted for the old games as very few of the new games are interesting to me but it was fun. Once the old games got eliminated I just made my votes random since I did not knew much about each games. You should try a Gettysburg tourney and if Gettysburg 88 from Avalon Hill doesn’t win I will be devastated 😊
Sorry for the slow reply. A Gettysburg tourney would be both fun and ... expensive. I only have two Gettysburg games at the moment. (A Most Fearful Sacrifice & the old Avalon Hill version).
I went bankrupt because of this series. Thanks a lot Zilla.
Mike has been known to do that to me as well .... 🤣
Nick Stasnopolis
Me too.
Haha! This made me snort up the bubbly water I was drinking. Thanks for the laugh, much appreciated. :) I hope you are putting food on the table. ;)
😁
Thanks, Zilla. This series inspired me to get my EA:A back on the table. I'm playing Allied Solo, and I'm deep into it now. Glad to see how well Mr. Butterfield's game did! Looking forward to your next series.
Oh, that’s great to hear. It always feels good to hear when a series helps people to play games. :) Good luck to your Allies!
"Speculating what might have been..." This is the definition of a war game!
Ha! Ain't that the truth. :)
Well done. This was a great series. I want more. LOL. This is a great way to expose people to more games out there. I didn't even know about some of these titles (Celles, The Ardennes Offensive). I bought two games due to this competition (Celles, WWII Commander: Battle of the Bulge). Honestly, Ardennes 44 wasn't even on my radar until your series. Now I'll have to consider it.
I vote for a D-Day Off for your next video series.
D-Day is a great choice, yes, although I'm thinking my next one might be a bit smaller one, where I play the games too. While I don't really need the games in hand to do the contest, I feel like going through the components and playing them during or after is somehow important to do, and the budget doesn't really allow for collecting big sets too regularly. :)
Love format. Would like to see, WW2 grand strategy, Gettysburg, Eastern front WW2. Maybe tactical WW2
Thanks Doug! These are all great ideas for categories, thanks for the suggestions. I'm actually working on a comparison of WW2 tactical systems at the moment, but it's more like a year-long project, as I want to play them. They also take time to learn. :)
The two battles that have a bagillion versions are Waterloo and Gettysburg.
But as a Bulgist, i am SO glad you did this. And, yes, Ardennes ‘44 is the best game on the battle.
Yeah, it would be an adventure to do Gettsyburg, for sure! It'd be great fun to do, but wow, narrowing it done would be challenging and getting the games would be trickier. I suppose I could do it without the game, but I feel it's important to have them on hand and to eventually play them.@@HernandezTony
Okay. I totally understand that Gettysburg and Waterloo are the “big boys” with too many games to even count. Literally.
Why don’t you, then, do another popular, but not so big battle?
Just one that comes off the top of my head and could EASILY be replicated like this one would be Operation Market Garden 🎉
I like the Market Garden idea more and more.
Most designers who touched on Second Ardennes also made a Market Garden games. As a bonus, some’ll use the same systems so it won’t be that big a hill to learn either.
Just like there’s “Nuts!” (🤣 ) like me with the Bulge, there are tons of dudes who live and breath Market Garden 🪴
Really did enjoy this concept and look fwd to seeing more of these for other genres. Maybe with the poll once you have closed the poll officially you can just edit the post and add a POLL CLOSED to the top?
Ah, yes, I could post a POLL CLOSED there, for sure. It's kind of fun to see how it morphs over time, though. Maybe in a few years it'll have 1k votes? :)
Four games with short play-through (a few turns) would be excellent. Especially for those of us that may not have played certain games.
Thanks, yes, that's exactly my thinking. If we picked 4 games and did a short playthrough on each one, people could vote on the one they liked. It'd probably also give people more information if they were thinking on buying a particular game too.
Nothing gets people talking and engaging like a good honest competition! Excellent series, and brought to my attention a number of games that I hadn't seen before. There are so many possibilities for similar events in the future - you could even extend it to PC games.
The idea actually kind of came from the PC games side, after doing a similar series on the Second Gear channel asking people to vote on all the different states for American Truck Simulator. Single elimination, and Texas got voted as the best state in the simulation. :)
Great series.
Looking forward to seeing more like this!
Thanks, Ron! I'm thinking about what I might do next, looking forward to something similar and yet different.
This series was great. Inspired me to get my first Bulge game (Worthington), which I've subsequently played 4 times, and is still on the table. I'm looking forward to where the next iteration or evolution of this goes. Someone suggested a "have not played" option on the polls, which is an interesting idea, and could be revealing and change the outcome of the voting.
Thanks! I like the idea of the "have not played" option. I can see that at the very least being helpful, and shouldn't really change the voting for the games involved. I think it makes sense to do that going forward. :)
And I hope you like the Worthington game! I think it's one of the more accessible games in the series, and can be played in a single sitting, which is nice.
Mike, thanks for doing this. If anything, I learned a lot about the psychology of my fellow gamers, at least when it comes to Bulge games.
Ha! My pleasure, Aaron. Yes, it was interesting to read people's comments and insights on the games and what was happening and why. Fun times, I'm looking forward to the next one. Thanks for participating. :)
Really good fun with some surprises along the way. So may choices for further battles and audience participation, ACW might be interesting with so may games out there. Many thanks for the entertainment.
I'm glad you enjoyed it, coyi! ACW would definitely be fun, although wow, that'd be a big group of games to narrow down. :)
Very interesting. I must admit my difficulties in select one game over the other. Looking forward to your next "championship". I liked your closing remarks and brought one important aspect aspect: data. The games have different aspects that are preferred by players: super-games, solitaire playability, game mechanics, historical recreation, etc. Maybe its possible to group categories so the data would be a way to "guide" others on games never played. Lastly, I suggest one category for voting: "never played"; certainly would give us something to consider. I haven't played some of the selections so it was hard to make comparisons. There are a few that I'm trying to obtain to play myself and understand the appeal of them. Keep up the good work and looking forward to your videos. Thank you.
I like the "never played" vote, yes. To a degree we tease that out by the number of votes per matchup, but it might be a nice option to include going forward.
And for sure, there could be different ways to group these other than by battle. Doing one on solitaire games would be fun, but wow, would it be contentious! :)
After watching the BCS videos and playing Salerno 43, I think Ardennes 44 won due to its relative simplicity to play compared the TLB. That's a monster to leave set up and play without getting kicked off the kitchen table.
Yes, I think the quality of The Last Blitzkrieg is second to none, but the complexity probably narrows the player base.
Great series! Narrative style solo games would be great as well as Air War games
Hmmm. A tactical Air War Solo Games series might be interesting. I can think of a half dozen off the top of my head, and I have most of them already. Lots of potential here, for sure.
Thanks for doing this competition. Very entertaining.
My pleasure, I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)
Interesting competition - no Last Gamble (Hobby Japan) by Danny Parker as unable to find. This was re-done by 3W as Hitler's Last Gamble with lots of errata. Also by Danny Parker was Dark December (OSG) which was not featured. The precursor to Bitter Woods was The Last Blitzkrieg from Michael Smith.
Thanks for the information. I'm looking forward to the new Danny Parker edition coming out this year from Compass Games. :)
I think a lot of the factors for this final match going to Ardennes 44 is most likely the smaller footprint, less numbers of counters and the ease of play of the ZOC bond system.
Yes, absolutely, I think it's exactly as you bring it up.
Don't get me wrong the BCS is not overly hard but you have a lot more to activate in a given turn than you do Ardennes 44. Last Blitzkrieg is battalion scale and Ardennes 44 is largely division scale right?@@ZillaBlitz
Loved the series, would like to see africa korp type of competition.
I'd love to do North Africa but I suspect there are more North Africa games than Bulge games. That one might break the bank! :)
Very enjoyable, thank you
Thank you Larry, I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)
I really enjoyed this "Bulge off" Series! The reason i didn't vote was because i don't own a Bulge game yet. But i watched with great interest. Thank you
Thanks for watching and no worries on the voting. I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)
I have only Played one Bulge game and that is Last Blitzkrieg its a brilliant game in a great series.
It's a great choice for a game, for sure! So many fans. :)
As you were discussing all the things that went into rating a game, and all the factors that went into deciding which game was better, until a final decision was made, it became obvious to me that we should skin Arms Trade Tycoon, and create a Wargames Tournament Tycoon!😄
Now this is a game you have to make! :)
I backed silver and bronze throughout. Quite glad they never came up against one another as I couldn't choose - they are very different games. Congrats to the winner - I don't own it but have a couple of the '44 games and they are very good. It's just that three Bulge games would be a game too far!. I can see this being expanded - Normandy, Market Garden, PTO, North Africa etc
Yes, it would have been interesting to see some of the other matchups, for sure. And most definitely, I'm looking forward to trying some more of these with different areas. :)
I’d be curious about island hopping in the Pacific as a topic.
Pacific strategic level would be interesting, yes. I think Empire of the Sun would win, maybe Pacific War comes in second?
Yup, want more of a 4 game series play-through so I have more of an idea what I am voting for. With You-Tube limiting it to 4 choices in a poll, you could START with 4 polls of 4 each in the selected category--like Barbarossa--to pare down to the 4 you actually play. (In effect, YOU decide the sweet 16 and WE decide the final 4. Then WE decide the rank of those 4 after you play them.)
~~~
As an aside, I played my original '65 AH Battle of the Bulge solo because of this series. The Germans won in a rout the 1st time. Thought about a couple of things the US could try and played again--and the Germans basically reversed their combat luck on the opening few turns compared to that first game and just completely stalled out. No need to use what I thought the US might need to do as the Germans weren't going anywhere.
I like the variation of going from 16 to 4, then doing playthroughs on those 4. Or do 8 to 4 and then doing playthroughs on the 4. Something like that. And that's awesome that it inspired you to play your '65 Bulge! I'm always happiest when people are playing games because of something on the channel. :)
And Danny Parker's Battle of the Bulge game is set to release soon...The Last Gamble. Hmmm... 🤔...well, a tip of the ole' hat to you ZB, great great fun watching this all unfold...but...dare I say the word ..."re-match"... for Danny Parker's The Last Gamble...?😜
Ha! Yes, I have that one on pre-order so I'm excited to check it out. Maybe next year we take the 4 semi-finalists and the new Bulge game and do monthly focus of some sort. I do want to play many of these games during the upcoming year too. :)
Would like to play a game with BC's map & Ardennes 2 counters. Love the Last Blitzkreig map.
Fun idea! It'd be interesting to mix and match some of these games, yes. :)
This was really cool, maybe you could do an eastern front comparison. 👍
Eastern Front would be really fun. The next one will probably be a smaller scale though, because I want to play the games and assembling big fields of games is tricky expense-wise.
Like the idea oft he tournament. Kind of fun light content. Would like to see a game topic that isn't 95% hex and counter style games next time.
It's actually interesting in itself that so many Bulge games are hex and counter. I'd not considered that aspect before.
I wish you would do a review of the top three games. It would help choose the game I would want but
I hope to do something like that for next December. At the moment though I've got a lot of games in the queue, and it will take a while to learn and play all 3 of these. :)
So Ardennes '44 must be the penultimate Bulge game...might have to check it out although I have an aversion to snow...
Off to North Africa with you then? :)
I enjoyed the tournament. Not surprised that "44 won although that system just doesn't work for me. I understand that it is very popular. Maybe I just have too many sets of rules bouncing around after 50 years of gaming.
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! :)
This may not be the place for this but I wanted to get it out to you Its a tank battle between a Ger Panther and a US Pershing during the battle of Koln,
Thanks!
I cannot purchase either of these on Amazon.
Jesus is helping 🙏👍
This might be one of the funniest one-two comment-responses I've seen yet. Good humor. :)
🎉 Excellent , thanks , Jesus will save u 🙏🌿✍️👍
Thank you too