Scenario Review Scenario Title: Indian Wars Author: Andrew Hoekzema Reviewer: John Petroski   Historical scenario. Fight for your life as a nation of Native American warriors to survive against the oppressive Americans. Download at csc.apolyton.net

Overall Rating 25/30 SYNOPSIS: This scenario is simply one of my favorites. It is definitely the very best Great Plains scenario out there and I had a blast playing it over and over again (as different tribes). It had a few repetitive events and other things that made the scenario too easy in certain areas and much too hard in others. With a few brush-ups this scenario could go a few points higher.

Playability Rating 9 / 10 COMMENTS: This scenario is probably Andrew Hoekzima's best one in my opinion. It is one of the most fun scenarios that I have yet to play. It has a good atmosphere, not much of an obtainable tech tree but that is no crime so long as you give out techs via the events file as he did. This scenario is also one of the better balanced ones out there. I found that I could play as literally any of the Indian tribes and have a good time although some were harder to win with then others, of course I think that that makes the scenario all the better. On a fun scale, this scenario gets a 10 but there were a few kinks in the scenario that made it less than it could be. For instance when an Indian War Chief is killed, another one just pops up free of charge. The major problem that I have with this is that in the earlier stages of the game I found myself just using him over and over again, I used about 37 of them! I don't think that this is very realistic and I have a simple remedy: Make an event were when one dies the tribe that lost him loses money. You could say that the tribe donates their belongings for his burial or something. This way it will be bad to lose one of these units instead of just a shrug response. I think that this scenario could have used more units in it. If you have ever played one of my scenarios you know that I like to use every available unit slot. My suggestion is to make various other types of units. I think that this scenario could be very much improved if Andrew stuck in a unit for "buffalo" which could be Barbarian and would give you money if you killed it. (However if the Americans killed it you could have an event detailing how they used only the fur and nothing else).

Level of General Care 7 / 10 COMMENTS: The reason why I gave a comparatively low mark to this area of Andrew's scenario is mainly because his read me was very small. I like to know what is going on to some extent but with his read me I was completely in the dark. I had many questions in my mind as to what he was using certain things for, why he did this, why he did that etc. I am not very knowledgeable of this time frame and so all that I am saying is that 2 more hours work on a read me could make all the difference. I would specifically like to know why he had the War Chief event done like that. In other words for all I know, in his own mind he had a perfectly viable reason for making the event that way but without documentation of it I had no idea, thus lower marks in other categories. On the good side, he did take care of the details in the actual scenario such as city names, events, and most importantly terrain. I like how he put forests on river squares so that although once on a river you could move fast, it would cost you movement points to ford it.

Art and Originality 8 / 10 NEW IDEAS: As far as originality, he has it in this scenario with the American Railroad unit. This is basically a unit that is hidden along American RR so that Indians can not use it. I loved that idea, I think that it made a big difference in this scenario too (it forced me to gallop around the plains rather than steam into Chicago in 1 turn). ARTWORK: For the units that were used in this scenario, the artwork was superb. Some of the units were borrowed from other scenarios but I see no reason to mark it down because of this, all that I think matters is that it looks nice and is historically accurate.

NOTES: This is a must have for anyone who is interested in this time frame of history. I can guarantee that you will not find a better scenario from this time.

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