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The Fast Action Battle (FAB) Series - Volume 1: The Bulge
From Rick Young, designer of Europe Engulfed, comes a series of fun, tense block games. FAB games focus on speed and playability with low-unit density while keeping the history both accurate and exciting.
Volume 1: The Bulge brings you the Battle of the Bulge from December 16th through December 27th. You command the division and brigade level units using the historical orders of battle. You order your forces to key points, and decide how and when to order extra Assets to bolster them. Note that there are never enough of these Assets to give to all the units begging for them, so you need to weigh your decisions carefully.
FAB delivers a new blend of units and decisions to the block game genre: your forces are a mixture of wooden blocks and die-cut counters.
Blocks: your divisions and brigades are multi-step wooden blocks with printed labels on one side only, with step-losses represented by rotating the blocks. FAB has a new twist on the units in that the pips on the edges of the blocks are color coded to represent troop quality, which can change as a Division suffers losses. Elite Units can lose their edge and become Veteran, while Green Units can harden and become Veteran as they experience the strains of combat.
Counters: Die-cut counters represent (1) additional Assets available to you as the Field Commander and (2) major Events that could have or did occur during the battle.
Assets represent engineers, army level artillery, independent armor and infantry regiments/battalions, and other small units that can be temporarily assigned to the battles that you deem important to your strategy.
Randomly drawn Events provide divisional replacements, air strikes, interdiction teams, parachute drops, and events unique to each battle in the Series. These Events represent unique opportunities which you can use to influence the outcome, although you cannot count on exactly when these opportunities will be available to you.
Another strong element of FAB is the return of Special Actions, which have already been proven in GMT’s Europe Engulfed design to give flexible, exciting game play. Special Actions give you tense choices in deciding how and when to seize initiative or interfere with a sudden move by your opponent.
Series Designer: Rick Young
Series Developer: John Foley
Published: 2007
Online Play
Wargameroom (real-time)
- Novel block-counter approach adds tactile variety
- Fast play time relative to big Bulge titles
- Block mechanics may be unfamiliar to some players
- Limited historical granularity compared to larger simulations
- Block-based Bulge play with fast action cadence
- Bulge operations with a unique block-based system
- Compact, action-forward Bulge experience
- Winter Thunder
- Arden's Offensive
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- block-based counters — Blocks replace traditional counters for unit representation.
- fast-paced turns — Smaller-scale decisions and a quicker tempo than typical hex-based games.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- All 20 of these games are worthy games
- The competition is real
- Go vote for which one of these two games you think is the better bulge game and should continue on in the competition
- Thanks so much for watching everybody
References (from this video)
- High accessibility for a GMT product; good entry point for faster sessions
- Less depth than heavier monster games for advanced players
- fast-action, streamlined approach to Bulge play
- Battle of the Bulge, late 1944
- concise, quick-to-table design with reasonable depth
- Ardennes Offensive
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- fast-action design — reduces setup and decision time while preserving core Bulge dynamics
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Older games from pre-2000 did very well.
- Nostalgia didn't do very well against gameplay in this case because the 1981 version got 63% of the vote.
- There is something to be said for games that play Fast play quick and easy to get to the table.
- Accessibility was a factor in there because one of the goals of this channel is to broaden the games that people play.