Bear with me, I can explain.

Evolution crawling from the sea

ACME is the second game in this series, following on from 2019’s Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea. It builds on the original with the same system, but some changes. In ACIS there are 10 civilisations, each with their own homeland, but those numbers jump to 17 civilisations and 22 different homelands in ACME.

Let that number sink in. 17 civilisations to choose from. How many games can you think of that come with anything even like that number of different factions, even with expansions? I’ll concede that there are small differences between the civilizations. Usually, it’s just a change or addition to a standard rule which fits with that civilisation, thematically, but combined with the location(s) of their homeland, it results in some really nice asymmetric play.

On top of the bigger numbers, the board itself is different. Land in ACIS is all of one type, whereas in ACME there are four different types, and the types are important. Having settlements in different terrain types adds to the number of ‘Discs for Growth’ you get as income at the start of a turn, and mountains can gain strongholds to bolster your defenses. Turns in ACME represent hundreds of years (500 in the first epoch, 100 in the fourth epoch) and the growth represents your people spreading out across the Middle East. Sometimes into untouched lands, sometimes butting heads against your neighbours, which is where the fun begins.

The other big change is with Wonders from the original game making way for Deities. Deities in this case shouldn’t give religious people much cause for concern as they don’t attempt to use any real ones, to the best of my knowledge. As the design notes in the rulebook state, during the epochs the game takes place in there were thousands of gods worshipped. ACME makes an attempt to distil them down to seven generic deities such as God of War, God of the Skies, God of the Dead, etc.

If you’re new to this series, once you ‘invest’ in a deity you can use its power on every turn, as long as its temple remains in play in your homeland. Some of these powers are really powerful, so choosing when to claim one, and which one you claim, can have a big impact. If you’re coming from ACIS, the biggest differences between Wonders and deities is that each person can only have a single deity, and they get to use it on every turn, not just when placing a disc on it.

Cardplay

There are no dice to worry about in Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East, but there’s a whole bunch of cards. Cards drive the majority of what happens in ACME, and they come in a variety of different flavours. Some get played during the aptly named Card Phase and do things like adding and removing discs to and from the board, changing the balance of the power. Some are investment cards, allowing you to add them to your play area with a few discs on. You get to trade those discs in at different times for different benefits. I particularly like the few Religion cards that turn up, which can only be used if you establish a deity first.

The juiciest cards of the bunch are the competition cards. During the competition phase of each turn each contested area gets resolved. If there are stacks of discs from different civs they duke it out, but each player can choose to play any number of competition cards face-down before they’re resolved. They grant you any number of benefits to help swing things in your favour, and balancing how many you use, and for which areas – that’s where the heart of the strategy lies. You’ve no way of knowing whether the cards someone has in hand are competition cards waiting to trip you up, or just cards they’re hanging onto. They might even be holding a Negate card, which as the name suggests, allows you to negate certain effects too. There’s no denying that combat can be a tense and cagey affair.

Luckily, interaction between players is encouraged. Not happy about the way a situation is developing along your western borders? Make a mutually beneficial deal with someone else. You’re meant to be representing great civilisations after all, so seeing this kind of back-and-forth is the game is great. It can be tempting to try to crush all before you early on, taking what feels like an unassailable position at the top of the pecking order, but it often doesn’t work out like that. It’s one thing to become dominant among the other civilisations, and a very different one to stay in that position. ‘Kill the king’ is alive and well in ACME, and I’m here for it.

Time flies when you’re having fun

ACME is an odd duck in some respects. There’s a maximum of four epochs to play, each with four turns. 16 turns doesn’t sound extraordinarily long, but those 16 turns could quite easily keep you playing for in excess of four hours, especially with the maximum quota of six players. It’s so much fun exploring the game’s systems though, and seeing how the shape of that part of the world changes as the years march on, that it really doesn’t feel like that long. Much in the same way as Sid Meier’s Civilization video games erased hours and hours of my life in the blink of an eye, time just zips along.

The game offers a fairly unique sandbox approach to games. There are a bunch of historically-inspired scenarios in the included Playbook if that’s your thing, but you’re encouraged to decide how you want to play. Don’t have four hours spare? Agree to play just the first two epochs. Only three of you are playing, and you want to keep things tight and aggressive? Add the border discs to carve a usable piece of the map out, leaving the rest forbidden. Maybe there are only two of you but you want to avoid the knife fight in a phone booth feel of just using a small part of the board. So pick a couple of civilisations each, or throw in a few Non-Player civs too. This open-ended feeling will feel like a joy to some and a real sticking point to others.

Some people like to have their game prescribed. The map is a certain size, x civilisations will play, and it will last y turns. There’s a lot to be said for that kind of structure being placed around a game. If that’s what you’re coming from, and that’s what you enjoy, then ACME can feel alienating. It’s the difference between being given a Lego kit and following the instructions to make a car and being given a box of Lego pieces and being told to come up with your own design. Some people love that, some don’t. Just be aware of that going into the game. As I mentioned above, there are preset scenarios, and there are guidelines on how to create your own, but ACME is a game that’s meant to be explored and played with, and you’ll get the most from it if you have a regular group who’ll enjoy that.

Final thoughts

Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East is a pretty unique game. The grand scale of nations rising and falling over the course of thousands of years is somehow contained within a game with a basic ruleset. Trust me, it won’t take long to learn how to play the game. It means that the rules do the most important of things with a game like this though – they just disappear. You don’t have to think too hard about what you can do, or how you do it. You just think about what you want to do. In fact, the only time you ever really need even the player aid, let alone the rulebook, is checking how many growth discs you’re awarded for what areas during the expansion phase.

The cards need a special mention. The artwork on each of them is gorgeous, without exception, and each has a quote from the King James version of the Bible’s Old Testament. The truly remarkable thing is that designer Mark McLaughlin has managed to find a quote for each of the game’s 103 fate cards which matches what the card describes. If you know the King James version, you know how expressive and poetic the text is, and you’ll find yourself quoting the text on the cards as you lay waste to your opponents.

The rest of the components are pretty standard GMT fare. Coloured cubes and discs, a nice board, and thin, card player boards and player aids. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. The coloured discs make it really easy to read the board state at a glance.

One other thing I really, really like about ACME, is the way it gives players who don’t get started well a chance to turn things around. If you find yourself eradicated from the map, or more than 5VPs behind everybody else, you can invoke the Gilgamesh rule. The Gilgamesh rule lets you start afresh with a new civilisation, a new set of discs, and a chance to take vengeance on those who wiped your predecessors from the face of the globe. It’s a really cool thing to do to fight needless player elimination, and I think it’s great.

If you like the idea of a sandbox civ game with a ton of ways to play, Ancient Civilisations of the Middle East is absolutely fantastic. Simple rules, easy cardplay, and enough strategy to keep everyone happy.

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East (2023)

Design: Mark McLaughlin, Chris Vorder Bruegge, Fred Schacter
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Mark Mahaffey
Players: 1-6
Playing time: 120-420 mins

The post Ancient Civilizations Of The Middle East Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Is your brain frazzled yet? No matter, I’m going to plough on regardless.

Interceptions and intersections

So let’s say for argument’s sake that your opponent has a trajectory on the board: a line of pieces which his task force of ships is somewhere along. If you choose to extend your own trajectory and intersect with theirs, then you open up the possibility of using a Naval Search action. After you’ve done the maths associated with the action (there are handy tables printed on the board, as well as player aids) you may well find that you’ve punched a hole in that enemy trajectory. When this happens everything on one side of that hole gets taken off the board, and it’s the player who punched a hold in it who decides which.

To put that into context, let’s say my opponent has a trajectory from Ireland to the coast of North America. The moment I punch a hole in that line, I decide which half of the ocean they’re in. If I remove everything to the west of my own wooden stick, it means their task force has to exist somewhere along the eastern half that remains. I don’t know where exactly, but I’m closing in, and if they were trying to escape that convoy to an American port, I’ve just made their job a whole lot harder.

To the uninitiated, it might seem like a really random way to do naval seek and destroy, but the reality is something much cleverer. This might sound stupid, but oceans are really big, and in comparison, ships are very tiny. The trajectory mechanism is a fantastic way to represent the difficulties these sailors faced in finding one another in the first place, let alone shooting at them.

It’s such an interesting mechanism, and it’s really hard to convey just how thoughtful and strategic it makes the game. It’s like hidden movement, but instead of moving to a place, you’re digging tunnels so that in future turns you could pop up anywhere along it, like some kind of aquatic mole. So we’re dealing with quantum, submarine moles – got it? All of this kiss chase is no good without some fisticuffs once you finally meet up, right? Maybe we played kiss chase differently to you, I don’t know.

Note to self: find better analogies.

You sank my battleship

When battles happen, they’re carried out on the side of the board on a dinky little battle area. It makes sense; the battles really are the side dish compared to the main course of the chasing. Combat is relatively simple as your various vessels push in and out of range taking pot-shots across a dividing line. A bit like a tennis court, with heavy hitters dropping into the net to unleash volleys, before retreating to a safe distance to see what comes back at them.

Battles are really satisfying. There’s loads of room for cunning tactics. For instance, when ships use the manoeuvre ability to change their range, they can produce smoke. When the smoke marker goes on the board it affects both the ships shooting out through the smoke, and those firing in, giving a -1 modifier each way. Not that useful you might think, but there are plenty of times when just surviving is your goal, and sometimes smoke can help you do exactly that.

With those two pieces of gameplay acting as the foundations of the game, everything else just bolsters and adorns it, and adds extra little niceties which pull the whole thing together. The different leaders your task forces can have with their rule-breaking abilities, the crap-ton of scenarios in the accompanying books, the way weather affects the game, and the way certain actions allow your opponent to snatch initiative away from you and interrupt your plans. With the right people, and those people understanding the game, Atlantic Chase is a thing of beauty.

Having the right people and having them understand are just two of a handful of wrinkles in the smooth finish.

Troubled waters

Learning Atlantic Chase isn’t exactly smooth sailing (sorry…). It’s a daunting thing to open a box and find five books and a total of 200+ pages facing you. Some of that is scenarios, some is chapter-and-verse rules, and a chunk is reserved for the tutorial book. Normally I’d have a bit of a moan if I found a game to be too impenetrable with its rules and lack of tutorial. In contrast, Atlantic Chase veers in the other direction. It introduces concepts and parts of actions one tutorial at a time, which means by the time you’ve finished them you’ve setup, played, and put away the pieces for ten separate tutorials, covering 51 pages of that book. I think it’s great that a tutorial goes to this level of depth, but it’s a) very time-consuming, and b) indicative of the level of intricacy and nuance the game dives down to at times. But it’s there in the first place, and it works, and that’s worth a lot in my book. It’s an easier learn than something like Salerno ’43 (review here).

Atlantic Chase isn’t a game to play casually or to teach to someone who might only play once or twice. Learning the game is an investment, make no mistake. To get the most out of the game you need a regular partner to play games with, because it’s a two-player game. There are solo scenarios, and the solo does play a decent game, but it’s the mind games which make this game as much fun as it is, and that’s just not as much fun when it’s only your mind in the game. I can imagine having a wargame-loving friend who I meet up with regularly and having an absolute blast with Atlantic Chase, playing through scenario after scenario. If you go into it with a “dip in, dip out” mindset, you’re not going to get the most from it. I really enjoy playing Atlantic Chase and I’ve had great fun with the scenarios, but you need that wingman. You need that Goose to your Maverick. I’m sad and Gooseless.

I’ll admit right now that I haven’t tackled the campaign, just because I don’t have the time with another person to be able to do it, and that makes me sad. I’m also not keen on some of the random chance events in the game when they crop up. The first scenario for example, has you roll a dice if you manage to get the German cruise ship The Bremen to Murmansk before war breaks out. The scenario ends either way, but on a roll of 1 Russia captures it, and anything else sees it refuel and join the Kriegsmarine as intended. Rolling a 1 would be a damp squib of an ending for the Axis player. A similar thing happens to close some Axis ports in the campaign (hey, I can read it and dream, okay), which could see you get to a port and find out that someone’s rolled a die and it’s shut for the weekend, and you’re stuck there until it opens, like falling asleep in your car after going to B&Q at a retail park on Sunday afternoon.

Final thoughts

What a double-edged sword Atlantic Chase is. On one hand, you’ve got this incredibly tense game of hidden-movement cat and mouse, using what for me is a groundbreaking mechanism. It’s ridiculously good fun, and far more accessible than many hex-and-counter wargames. Yet on the other hand to really squeeze that juice from it, to get all the fun that comes in that cardboard box, you really need the right person on the other side of the table. You could argue that that’s true of any wargame, but the trajectory mechanism, brilliant though it is, takes at least a full game to really start to intuit.

The rule and scenario books are really well-written, and while it might put some people off, I’m a big fan of the conversational style used in them. It’s another little touch which makes the whole thing feel slightly friendlier and more welcoming to newbies. The counters are a decent size too, so when it comes to conducting battles, you don’t need tweezers. It’d be remiss of me not to mention the little wooden trajectory markers. Each country’s task forces use a specific colour of stick for the trajectories, and each colour has three different kinds of stick, for each of the three possible task forces. Each task force’s sticks are differentiated by one or two stripes printed on them, which would be great, but they’re only printed on one side! Flipping them around to see which belongs to which is a royal pain in the backside, and I’d dearly love to see this fixed in future printings (please!!!).

If you’re okay with all of that though. If you don’t mind the learn and the teach, if you have a regular player two, and if you’re smart enough to bag each set of sticks separately (…), Atlantic Chase is an amazing game. The hidden movement is so, so clever, so unique, and so much fun to apply. The choice of how long to make each trajectory is exquisitely painful. Too long and get broken quickly, too short and it takes twice as long to get anywhere. The chase when someone breaks the line and hightails it to safety is brilliant. They’re all things which precious few games manage to evoke in quite the same way. I’ve heard good things said about designer, Jeremy (Jerry) White, and if Atlantic Chase is anything to go by, they’re all correct. A stunning piece of game design, muzzled slightly by its dependencies.

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Atlantic Chase (2021)

Design: Jeremy White
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Jeremy White
Players: 1-2
Playing time: 30-120 mins

The post Atlantic Chase Review appeared first on Punchboard.

It ain’t me, it ain’t me

The Vietnam War has been done in so many ways. From the passive interests of film and books, to agency-laden video and tabletop games. Fire in the Lake takes a fairly novel approach in not tackling the on-the-ground battles between the various factions involved. It adds a safety layer of abstraction by making the game function at the operational level. There are plenty of small differences to previous games, but those of you familiar with the way COIN games work will feel instantly at home with the concepts of control and support/opposition, which represent the political landscape of the conflict.

I love the way control and support work. It’s such a simple concept, but one which comes with multiple layers of nuance. You might think that the faction with control of a region or city would also have the local population in their pocket, but it’s not the case. It’s quite possible for the city to be controlled by the Counter-Insurgents (in this case the US and ARVN), but the VC and NVA’s actions mean that the populace there actively opposes that control. It’s a hallmark of COIN design, and it leads to some really tricky decisions to make. Taking a sub-optimal turn just to wrest control from someone feels like a punch in the guts, but sometimes you’ve just got to take your lumps.

One of the things I especially like about Fire in the Lake is the choice of playing the game in short, medium, or long scenarios. COIN games can be daunting things to learn, and the first game can really drag until the players all understand not only what they’re doing, but why. The why is so, so important, and sometimes difficult to convey. Being able to set up a short game, rattle through it in a couple of hours, and have everyone walk away from the table knowing what to do next time, is great.

It’s time to stop. Hey, what’s that sound?

I mentioned the differences above, and this is the point where I’d be excitedly rambling if you were sat in front of me, like the fervent nerd I am. We’ve got Coup rounds now instead of Propaganda rounds, which represent checkpoints in the game. Coups are essentially the same thing, but each coup brings a new RVN leader who stays in play – with their own ongoing effects – until the next coup. Coups also bring Monsoons, which means that the turn immediately prior to a Coup (you can always see the upcoming card in COIN games) has some restrictions. No sweeps, and restricted airlifts and airstrikes mean that there’s very little pre-coup preparation for players, and I like it.

The VC and NVA factions can create tunnelled bases which act in the same way as regular bases, but are much more difficult to remove. It’s a nice thematic touch, mirroring the tunnels the Viet Cong used during the conflict to not only hide during the days but also acted as supply routes, hospitals and caches for food and weapons. Another new touch is the introduction of Pivotal Event cards. Each faction has its own Pivotal Event which can have powerful impacts on the game state but require that certain pre-requisites are made first. Like spicy chillies just waiting to be thrown into the soup pot to cause havoc.

I nearly forgot to mention the Ho Chi Minh trail too, which represents the north-to-south trail in Vietnam. It’s a track which shows a value, which then determines how many troops the NVA can Rally. Actions can degrade the trail, reducing its efficiency. It’s a nice touch which represents something that doesn’t need to be on the map itself.

Another great thematic touch is the sort of forced symbiosis between the US and ARVN players. The US doesn’t have its own resources in the game, despite needing them for certain actions. Luckily they can just use the ARVN’s instead! This comes with its own restriction in the form of the Econ marker on the score track, meaning that the US can only spend the surplus above that marker. And this is what the COIN series do so well. They weave in forced cooperation between players who each want to win, meaning that these aren’t head-down, navel-gazing exercises in raw strategy. There’s an inherent layer of player interactions, never more evident than when a player desperately tries to steer someone else into a decision which doesn’t scupper their own plans.

War, children, it’s just a shot away

This is the awkward part of the review, because this is where I say “You know what – maybe Fire in the Lake isn’t for you”. I think it’s an amazing game, but I also acknowledge that it’s a deep game, and a complex game. Reading through the rules and setting the game up for the first time gave me flashbacks to when I tried to learn Gandhi for the first time. You can’t learn how to play Fire in the Lake from the rulebook, which sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. The rulebook is more like a technical manual. Trying to play a COIN game from the rulebook is like learning to drive with a Haynes manual. Just because you know the inner workings of a Ford Cortina doesn’t mean you know how to drive one, and the same goes for COIN.

Your friend in learning COIN, or in this weird analogy, your driving instructor, is the Playbook that comes in the box. The playbook walks you through some turns, explaining to you what’s going on, who’s doing what, and why. It’s vitally important to add this layer of context and application to the actions on offer. The thing is, even with that playbook, there’s no denying that Fire in the Lake is still a tricky game. There are a lot of small things that only go to reinforce my assertion that Cuba Libre is the de facto shallow end of the COIN swimming pool. On the giant Vietnam map you’ve got neighbouring countries with their own conditions for who can stay for how long. You provinces with 0 population, meaning securing them does nothing for your win condition. Lines of Communication bisect provinces, but despite looking like borders, they’re spaces you can occupy. The sheer size of the map, especially when compared to Cuba Libre’s board, makes it more difficult to read the map state at a glance.

None of this is to say that Fire in the Lake is bad in any way. Far from it, it’s an exceptional game. It’s just a very dense game, and learning it as your first COIN game may feel like hacking away at the jungle with a butter knife. If any of the points I raised above made you slightly more waterproof with an involuntary butt clench, head for Cuba Libre first.

Final thoughts

Despite my warning shots in the previous section, I’ve got to say that Fire in the Lake is a wonderful game. The COIN games are fascinating to me, because you can see the genealogical traits passed down through the games. I haven’t played all of them yet, but the Lines of Communication are similar to the railways in Gandhi. The NVA leaders are like the British Viceroys in the same game. You still get those lovely player aid cards which list not only the choices for your Operations and Special Activities, but also the win conditions for each player. They feel like menus at a restaurant, and there’s something I can’t quite put my finger on which makes me enjoy using them. It’s a bit like ordering at said restaurant – “Oh waiter, yes, I’ll take a main course of Patrol, with Advise for dessert, thank you”.

If you’re a fan of historical games set during the Vietnam war, then this really is the game for you. I love it when games take on this operational level of detail, instead of dealing with the actual conflict on the battlefield. Truthfully, a part of that is because I know about some of the horrors of war that happened there. That sort of thing is ever-present in the back of my mind when I play a game which tries to simulate a real-life conflict. But even if you took the theme away from the game and replaced it with something fantastical or futuristic, the card-drive gameplay and tidal shifts of power across the board are just a lot of fun.

There is a Non-Player/solo mode which plays a mean game, but it’s also pretty heavy lifting on your part as the NP player. COIN came into its own with simple solo in Gandhi, BUT, there is a new NP method available with the Tru’ng Bot, which is available to buy separately. Unfortunately, I haven’t used it myself, but from what I’ve read and watched, it sounds great. Fire in the Lake just packs so much in the box, it’s a game you could play over and over, and still have a riot each time. The different scenarios, the different ways to play it with the different factions, and the sheer variety of some of the situations you’ll encounter, mean you can get a lot of hours from your purchase. It’d be remiss of me to not mention that the long scenarios really can be looooong (4+ hours), but in the same breath, if a Coup card comes out and you’re setup just right, that 6 hour game just got chopped to a 2 hour one. I think the medium scenario is the best, although your mileage may vary.

Thematic, atmospheric, and beautifully designed. Fire in the Lake is a complex, table-filling beast which needs taming, but rewards you for your investment.

Review copy provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Fire in the Lake (2014)

Designers: Mark Herman, Volko Ruhnke
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Rodger B. MacGowan, Chechu Nieto, Mark Simonitch
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 180-300 mins

The post Fire In The Lake Review appeared first on Punchboard.

If you want to look under the hood of the game to see what makes it thrum, instead of just kicking the tyres and nodding with faux understanding, then read on.

Cuba Libre then – what’s it all about? It’s the second, and arguably most famous instalment in GMT Games’ COIN series. If you’ve visited here before, you might have read my reviews of some of the other COIN games – Gandhi and All Bridges Burning. I’m a huge fan of the counter-insurgency games, and I was really excited to take a stab at Cuba Libre, so to hark back to my original question – what’s it all about?

Your primer

It’s 1957. You’re Fidel Castro, and your 26July movement has designs on a revolution, aiming to overthrow the dictatorship currently ruling Cuba.

Actually, no, you’re playing the role of the government, looking to retain control of your island nation.

Then again, maybe you’re a part of the Directorio, the anti-communist movement. This is all getting confusing, isn’t it?

Perhaps we’ll just form a crime syndicate, open casinos across the country, and make some easy money when celebrities like Frank Sinatra visit.

The game is set during the Cuban Revolution, which happened around 1957-1959. You may not know the background and the history of what happened, but there’s a good chance you’ve heard of, or seen Pop Art of, some of the major players. Names like Fidel Castro, Ché Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos. If you want a bit more background, there’s a fantastic brief history here.

Playing as one of the four factions, you’ve each got to reach your very asymmetric goals before the other factions do the same, to claim victory. There’s a standard set of operations (actions) that many of the factions share, along with some special activities, which tend to be unique to each. All of the actions take place in the shadow of the deck of event cards, which churns its way inexorably towards the end of the game.

Most actions see you placing more units onto the board, spreading terror, attacking other factions, and trying to wrest control of the various spaces on the map. Most, if not all, factions in COIN games are looking to gain some kind of geographic dominance. That’s what you’re trying to do. That’s how you win.

A turn of events

The event cards are a common feature of COIN games, and they do a great job of putting el gato among las palomas. Each card not only determines the turn order for the current round but also has two contrasting views of an event, based on the real history of the situation.

Let’s look at an example.

The card Radio Rebelde lets the 26July player act first if they’re eligible for that turn. They choose to play the event text that says “Clandestine radio reaches masses: Shift 2 Provinces each 1 level toward Active Opposition.”. Powerful stuff – building opposition is a part of their win condition. But what happens if a rival gets to that event before them? They choose the other option on the card – “Transmitter pinpointed: Remove a 26July Base from a Province.”. That’s a double-blow for the 26July player, as bases not only count towards their win condition but also help them spawn more units onto the map.

The really clever thing that Cuba Libre does is to always show you the upcoming event, as well as the current one. There’s never an excuse for not knowing what was coming next and blaming bad luck. If you take a turn in a round, you’re ineligible for the following round. It means if there’s a powerful event coming up, you can pass to ensure you’re eligible, but then you’re not only skipping a turn but also gifting an opponent the opportunity to take the turn you were going to. It’s the cause of a lot of teeth-sucking, and it’s fabulous.

One of my favourite thing about COIN games, and war games in general, is how educational they are. If you take the time to read the material that comes with them and put the events on the cards into context, you end up with a combination of fun and learning that beats any ‘Edutainment’ CD-ROM you might have played in the ’90s.

Easy does it

If you’ve been looking into the COIN games, trying to decide which one to start with, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Cuba Libre suggested. It’s touted as “the easiest one”, or “the lightest one”, and there’s a grain of truth in there. The map and board are smaller than in some of the other games in the series, and when you see the island and its few brightly coloured provinces, it looks much more approachable than something like Gandhi, with its table-filling map of India.

There’s less intricacy and nuance in the various actions on your bi-fold menus of carnage – otherwise known as the player aids. Three of the factions are essentially trying to put lots of units on the map in order to take control and throw weight behind government support or opposition, wherever their loyalties might lie. It’s only the Syndicate which feels like an outlier, and to put that into context for those of you who have played Root (review here), they’re akin to the Vagabond in the base game. Never looking for outright dominance, instead, just looking to make the most of a bad situation.

What all of this means to you and me, is that Cuba Libre is a much easier game to explain, and it feels more intuitive. You can plan your machinations from turn one, and always have a clear view of what’s unfolding. There are four Propaganda cards shuffled into the event deck, each of which acts as a momentary pause in proceedings, and resets some of the various goings-on on the board – things like abject terror among the Cuban population – which is nice. There’s none of the “posturing and waiting for the Second Act” of All Bridges Burning, and the game state is much more easily intuited than trying to make sense of the Fire in the Lake map, for example.

Final thoughts

I stated that Cuba Libre is friendly in my opening paragraph. Friendly is a relative term when it comes to COIN games. I jumped in at the deep end when I took on Gandhi as my entry point into the series, and to call it daunting would be an outrageous understatement. COIN games do a great job of bridging the gap between heavy Euro and outright wargame, but the referential style of the rulebook, and the fact that there’s a rulebook and a playbook, will seem very alien to many boardgamers. If you’re prepared to invest in the GMT mindset, however, then hoo boy – there’s a heck of a game waiting on the other side.

The designers, Jeff and Volko, have baked an incredible level of balance into Cuba Libre. There are times when you’ll see someone’s victory marker creeping uncomfortably close to their victory position on the score track. Because the game state is so easy to read, they’ll often find themselves hauled back down into the dust-up by the other players, who are acting with an unspoken, collective understanding. Even when you’re the person being knocked back down a peg or two, you’ll still crack a wry smile at how well the game is working.

The non-player (NP) factions are still there, if you’re a solo player, or find yourself down a person or two at your games night, but the NP (AI) actions aren’t as quick and easy as All Bridges Burning, for example. That’s to be expected. We’re talking about a game that was released all the way back in 2013, which is an age in board game terms. It’s still perfectly playable, just be prepared to invest a little more time and mental energy in running the NP turns.

Choosing a favourite COIN game for me is a bit like choosing a favourite child for some people. I want to say I love them all equally, but I secretly love Cuba Libre the most. So much so I even sorted it all into the wonderful counter trays and card holders from Cube4Me. Just don’t tell the other COIN games in my collection, they’ll get jealous.

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

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Cuba Libre (2013)

Designers: Jeff Grossman, Volko Ruhnke
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Xavier Carrascosa, Rodger B. MacGowan, Chechu Nieto
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 180 mins

The post Cuba Libre Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Out of my depth

I think it’s best to start with some kind of disclaimer like I did when I tackled Gandhi. I came at that game as a Euro game fan, looking in on the COIN series. With Salerno ’43 I’m doing something similar. I chose this entry in the ZOC games as my first because I did some research. Research which told me this was the smallest map, and the lowest number of units to manage. It’s touted as a good beginner’s game for these reasons, and with the benefit of hindsight, I can see why.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a game suited for wargame newbies like me, however.

I’ll be frank with you and admit that even as someone who’ll happily sit down and learn a heavy Vital Lacerda game like On Mars, I struggled to get to grips with Salerno ’43. It’s not that there’s anything missing in the rules. Everything is in there. It’s just very referential. There’s an example of play at the back of the rulebook, but it still leaves you feeling like you’ve been shoved in at the deep end of a swimming pool after reading the Ikea ‘how to swim’ instructions.

If you’re new to the world of wargames, even just the basic setup can feel quite alien. In a hobby board game you’d expect a list of components, maybe an overview, and then instructions for setup in the first few pages. Setup in Salerno ’43 depends on the scenario you’re playing, and the first time it’s mentioned is on page 23 of a 32 page rulebook. Performing setup relies on some reading between the lines and a little guesswork, but you’ll get there. It’s not necessarily that this style of rules and instructions is wrong, it’s just different, so be prepared for a culture shock.

Swimming to shore

You’d be forgiven for thinking I don’t like Salerno ’43 after that opening salvo. The truth is very different. Salerno ’43 is a great game, once you get your head around the way it works. It’s a scenario-based wargame, based on real events. If you play as the Allies, the game commences with a beach landing, with a long-term goal of forcing your way into Italy. The Axis are just there to try to stem the flow, and to hang on until reinforcements arrive.

It’s a very evocative piece of game design, with so much attention to detail. Take the initial beach landings for example. Uncle Beach was famously where the main resistance came during 1943, and so the dice rolls for the commando units landing there are the only ones that can take any significant damage. The terrain matters, and roads make an enormous difference to how far mechanised units can travel. Rivers aren’t just pretty lines on the map. Infantry slows to a crawl as they wade across, and vehicles won’t cross at all without bridges. It takes some wrapping your head around to have to be able to read a map to figure out your best channels to attack and defend.

If you’re a hex-and-counter newbie, like me, you might think that the stacks of tiny tiles with some numbers printed on them aren’t even as exciting as a meeple, and that’s saying something! The surprising truth is that despite the layer of abstraction on the table, where platoons of men are replaced with small tiles, you get very invested in them. Part of that is the knowledge that they represent real people who fought and died in the conflicts, but as much of it is the attachments you make as you tell your own story.

Push inland

Thanks in part to the smaller number of units in Salerno ’43, losses feel palpable. When one of your commando units is destroyed, it hurts. Not only that, it forces you to sometimes alter your plans very dynamically. Mark’s clever ZOC system creates invisible zones around, and links between, your units. Enemies getting too close have to stop, and woe betide anyone that tries to cross the bonds two of them. This comes to life most noticeably when you’re trying to stop a retreat. Units forced to retreat through a ZOC bond are eliminated.

There are some really clever little things you can do within this system, which take time and repeated play to emerge. A unit surrounded on three sides is effectively useless because those bonds act as fences, penning it in. If another friendly unit moves into one of the spaces, breaking that bond, the trapped unit can sneak out, as if you’ve held the door open with your foot. It all goes towards adding a surprisingly deep, and nuanced level of gameplay.

Combat uses a table of ratios to determine how effective your dice rolls will be. If you don’t like the available outcomes on your 2:1 attack in the table, you can shift a column to the right by throwing in air support, or artillery. When the weather’s bad, you might find things shifting the opposite way. It’s a simple, elegant way to portray combat with just a die and a table on your player aid.

Reinforcements flood the map as the rounds tick by, weather patterns change and affect movement, and the whole thing feels alive. The first time German reinforcements arrive and drive their trucks halfway across the map, using the movement bonuses from roads, is a real eye-opener. I was worried that a game with a standard setup, and what feels like a standard set of first turns, could feel dull quickly. The clever part comes in the small changes that happen in the opening landings, and it can lead to vastly different outcomes and board states.

Final thoughts

If you’ve gotten this far in the review, there’s probably one question that’s prodding your brain. Would I recommend Salerno ’43? The answer is yes, but I need to lay down some caveats first. If you’re an experienced wargamer, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble picking this game up. The smaller map and reduced unit numbers might make the game seem a bit simplified, but Salerno offers up a constricted, meandering maze of mountains and roads which make for stark contrast to the open battlefields of some games. It’s not a game about large-scale combat, it’s a game of shepherding and hindering for the Axis player, and trying to pry open a large, grey walnut for the Allies.

If you’re a board gamer coming at Salerno ’43, looking to take your first step into a world of hexes and tiles, just be realistic about what you’re letting yourself in for. Even the fact that the board is just a folded map – with no actual board – can be a big shock (you can buy mounted boards from GMT). The concept of a unit’s ‘steps’ is terminology you might never have come across, and that’s just the first of many such idiosyncracies of these games. If this sounds like a bridge too far for you, then honestly, you probably won’t have the perseverance to get to the juicy flesh under the thick skin of this game’s fruit.

If you’re still intrigued, then go for it. War games aren’t about glorifying war, and if you take the time to read the supplements in the books, they’re incredibly educational. This is a strategic game which enacts a real-world scenario, and if anything leaves you with a sense of reverence for the people you portray. The gameplay is tight, the player aids are fantastic, and the whole thing is an enjoyable experience. The rules are excellent reference tools, just don’t expect to learn how to play from them. Instead, check out the excellent playthrough of the extended example of play from Stuka Joe and this after-action report from The Players’ Aid, to get some feel for how the game works. It’s a great system, a great game, and I want the rest of Mark’s ZOC games now…

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own. All images ©Scott Mansfield .

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Salerno ’43 (2022)

Designer: Mark Simonitch
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Mark Simonitch
Players: 2
Playing time: 180-600 mins

The post Salerno ’43 Review appeared first on Punchboard.

This isn’t GMT Games’ first foray into the world of car racing. The series that uses the same engine (so to speak) also incorporates Grand Prix, and the better-known Thunder Alley. Anything from two to ten(!) players control a team of cars each, with each car having its own speed and defence rating. The wheels of the cars are turned somewhat by the wheels of fate, with each player having a hand of cards to play racing actions from.

It’s about the journey, not the destination

I suppose the first thing I ought to tell you about this game of cars racing around a track, is that it’s not a race. When I first realised this, I had a bit of a moment. A game about cars racing around a track, and it’s not a race?? You can go streaking ahead, lapping all and sundry, and still lose at Apocalypse Road. There’s no point in covering your car in all manner of dangerous objects if you’re not going to use them, so you can smash each other up!

To win in Apocalypse Road, you need to exhaust your supply of VP chits on the main board. Everyone starts with the same number of chits, and you can claim one for every lap completed, and each time you destroy a car. Maybe I was overdoing it with the whole “It’s not a race thing”, after all you do get rewarded for crossing the start/finish line. In truth though, you’ll end up racking up as many – if not more – VPs from your wanton auto carnage.

There’s a real shortage of honest-to-goodness racing board games, which is why it’s important I explain this all now. If you’re looking for something to replace Downforce, Rallyman, or Flamme Rouge, this isn’t it. It shares the DNA, sure, but it’s very different to shifting gears and slipstreaming to go the fastest. Apocalypse Road is no-holds-barred, unapologetic chaos. You’ll get shot at, rammed, shunted out of the way, and there’s very little you can do about it. Unless, of course, you get your team strategy right.

Oops Upside Your Head

I’m not sure if this piece of drunken pub/wedding reception culture made it across the Atlantic. Over here in good old Blighty, if enough drunken people get together and Oops Upside Your Head by The Gap Band comes on, they all sit in a line on the floor, swaying and rocking (you can see it here, if you really want to…). For whatever reason, watching chains of cars move in union really evoked memories of inebriated floor dancers. Go figure.

The way chains of cars push and pull one another around the track in Apocalypse Road is at the core of the game. Every turn involves someone playing a movement card, and deciding how best to use it. Linking is the word used everywhere in the rulebook, and it describes strings of cars that touch front-to-back, moving as a group. Sometimes it’s obligatory, sometimes it’s a choice (depending on the card played), but in either situation it’s essentially trying to create ordered chaos – like herding cats.

Even though it seems like a simple system at first, you’ll soon realise there are fathoms of depth to the cardplay. Instead of just trying to streak ahead with your fastest car, or push along blocks of your own cars, you start to discover nuanced tactics. You can box rival cars in, then bring a car up from behind with forward facing weapons to wallop the caged rat. On the flip side, if you see one of your damaged cars starting to get penned-in, using optional linking to pull them out of trouble is a great feeling.

Traffic congestion

At the top of the review I mentioned that Apocalypse Road plays from two to ten players. When you consider that each player has at least four cars on the track at any moment, that can add up to a lot of cars. Although the number of cars you control is set by the number of players in the game, it can still vary from 10 up to 40 cars in the derby. That’s a huge range, and as you might expect, the type of game you end up playing can vary wildly.

Two player games are tepid, and the tracks feel too big, and too empty. In contrast, nine or ten is absolutely bonkers. Granted, I’ve only had the chance to play at the higher player counts using the Vassal mod for Apocalypse Road (which is excellent). I can’t imagine trying to get ten players around a table, each with their own team board, and the big track board in the middle. Four to seven players however, when you’ve got 20-28 cars all beating the crap out of each other, that’s the sweet spot.

Once you get that perfect balance between chaos and tactics, Apocalypse Road is awesome. It’s a game packed full of bite-sized battles and narrative. That’s right, I said narrative. It’s not a story told by the game, however, it’s the sum of the smaller stories that unfurl during the game. It’s like watching a Mad Max film as clusters of cars come together, and cars from other teams lurk behind like vultures, waiting to pick off the weakened survivors. You’ll remember the big moments from the game, and you’ll talk about them as then dust settles afterwards.

Final thoughts

I love how diverse GMT Games’ portfolio is. Some people would see their little red logo on a box and discount it as ‘another war game‘, but in doing that you’d be depriving yourself of a real gem in Apocalypse Road. It’s not a game of grand strategy, but in the same breath it’s not a luck-ridden, mangled metal mess. It’s meant to be proper, old-fashioned fun, and it’s exactly what it is.

Despite being advertised as a game that plays from two players, I wouldn’t choose to play with anything fewer than four. It just feels too diluted with a small player count, like when you try to make a glass of squash but there’s only a trickle in the bottom of your bottle of Ribena. You might try to fool yourself into thinking it’ll taste good, but you know you’re not getting the full flavour.

Once you get the hang of the cards, it’s a really simple game to play. It’s kept alive and varied by the various event cards that get drawn, and also by the four tracks included on two double-sided boards. If that’s not enough for you, you can even use the tracks from Grand Prix and Thunder Alley if you own them, and vice-versa. There are no cool little car minis, so it doesn’t look like a game of Gaslands on the table, but it doesn’t matter one bit. If you’ve got a group of friends who dig the theme, get it. A post-apocalyptic, pretzels & Pabst, petrol-powered, powder keg of a game. Frankenstein would approve.

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Apocalypse Road (2020)

Designers: Jeff Horger, Carla Horger
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Nicole Balsley, Kurt Miller
Players: 2-10
Playing time: 60-90 mins

The post Apocalypse Road Review appeared first on Punchboard.

COIN it in

If you’ve been wargame-curious, there’s a good chance you’ve seen this capitalised ‘COIN’ somewhere. It’s a series of counter-insurgency games from various designers, all published by GMT Games. I guess you could call them wargames, but in my (admittedly limited) experience, there’s very little warfare. There’s no attack and defence values, or tiny numbers on a sea of cardboard chits. COIN games are about influence, control, and upsetting the balance of power. The lifeblood of COIN is an event deck which ticks away throughout the game, offering powerful opportunities, and sobering context to what’s happening on your table.

All Bridges Burning is a bit of an outlier in the series, as it’s one of the rare titles which isn’t built around four different factions. You take control of the Reds, seeking a working class revolution, the white Senate guard, trying to maintain control, or a third, blue, Moderate faction who want political reform. It gives the whole thing a very different feel, and I think it’s a real boon for new players. COIN games can be heavily asymmetric, and keeping track of what the other players are doing, as well as remembering their win conditions, is tough. Reducing that mental overhead by a third for each player isn’t to be sniffed at.

COIN games are strict in that all of the factions need to take part in every game, but at the same time they’re easy-going in that they don’t care how many meat-bags humans are taking part. The automa/AI players – or Non-Players (NPs) to use GMT’s parlance – are controlled with decks of cards and simple flow charts. Heck, you could have all three decks play against each other with no players at all if you really wanted to. The NP turns are super smooth, and mean that you can play a solo game relatively quickly. Solo play is great by the way, just be aware that the victory conditions are slightly different.

A game of two halves

All Bridges Burning has two distinct phases, and each has a markedly different feel. The first half of the game is spent posturing, building support, and doing your best to keep your cards (figuratively) close to your chest. There’s no hidden information at all.

The way these games convey theme still astounds me. For example – when the number of cells on the board reaches a critical mass, the Reds’ revolution begins. The tension this weaves into the game is fantastic. More and more activists spread across the map, vying for control of towns and regions. The white guard swell their numbers in response. You can feel it’s all going to kick off, and it’s a case of when – not if – it happens.

Up until that point, the red and white forces can’t even move around the map, let alone attack. Once the revolution starts, the game swings dramatically. Trains and cannons come into play, and all of a sudden you’re trying to build the foundations for Finland as it moves away from being a Russian duchy, into the 20th century. Russian and German troops are also in the country with their own vested interests, and the players can leverage them for their own goals. The poor Moderates are left trying to keep some kind of balance and political control while the rest of the country tears itself apart. The dichotomy between the two phases is stark, and really engaging.

If it sounds like it’s a long game, then you’re on the right track. You’re looking at something like at least three hours per game, and your first game will probably take twice as long, especially if you’ve never played a COIN game before. If it’s not your first rodeo, you’ll find it easier to pick up, but there are some notable changes from the previous games. GMT have kindly added callout boxes to the rulebook to bring these to your attention. The first you’ll notice is that eligibility order is based on player decisions now, not what’s drawn on the top of the card. It’s also likely you’ll take actions in nearly every round, not just every other.

All things in moderation

While COIN games are all about their asymmetry, it feels different in All Bridges Burning. Using Gandhi as my frame of reference, we had two violent and two non-violent factions. In All Bridges Burning, if you’re the player playing as the Moderates, it really feels like you’re playing a very different game to the others. The Reds and Whites are building up these huge forces across the map, bolstering their positions along the way, and you know that they’re going to spend the slugging it out. The Moderates though, they’re left stuck with six cells to place for the entire game. They can’t engage in combat. They feel less potent than the others.

It’s not a problem if you like COIN games, and you know what to expect, but if you’re playing this with someone new to the series, I’d suggest giving them control of red or white, instead of blue. The actions feel more tangible, and you get a better visual connection between what you’re doing and how it relates to your victory condition.

What I love about these games is the way they force you to make tough choices all the time. Everyone has their standard actions, and some powerful special commands at their disposal, which would make for an interesting game if those were all that happened. The event deck just turns things up to 11, and keeps throwing wonderful distractions out, tempting you off the road to victory. The cards offer all kinds of powerful actions, and all players know which card will be next. Sometimes you just have to pass your turn, delaying your plans, just to make sure you have first dibs on the next round’s card. That can be because you really want that next event, but nearly as often it’s just to deny one of your opponents the chance to do the same.

Hnnnnnghhh! Decisions are tough!

Final thoughts

Okay, I think I’m firmly in love with COIN games. When I first played Gandhi I was daunted, but perseverance rewarded me with one of my favourite games. I wondered whether a second COIN game would feel like more of the same, and it does. Except… it doesn’t. The system feels immediately familiar, the way the game works with its event deck, propaganda rounds, and standard actions. It doesn’t just feel like the same game with a fresh coat of paint though. All Bridges Burning isn’t just set in a different time and place, it also feels like a very different experience to play.

A game like this is never going to have the universal appeal of something like Ticket To Ride or Wingspan, and that’s okay. We’re talking about a pretty niche genre with COIN games, but I think that narrow slice of the board game pie-chart is getting bigger. So while I wouldn’t recommend you buy this to take over to play with the family at Christmas, I would say that if you’re into hobby board games, and are even remotely curious about COIN games, GMT Games, or wargames of any sort, this is a fabulous place to start.

I love the fact that all factions in All Bridges Burning need to be mindful of all of the moving parts on the board. There are very achievable conditions where none of the players win. The German and Russian supporting troops can win, but if they tie, nobody at all wins. Maybe that sounds terrible to you, but I love it. It keeps everyone aware of everything that’s going on, and it means towards the end of the game you could end up taking sub-optimal turns, just to avoid losing to a force who don’t have anyone controlling them!

All Bridges Burning is a fantastic game, and for now, it’s the COIN game I’d recommend to get started with. It’s Tosi hyvä.

Footnote

I know the way I talk about this game makes it sound like I have a very flippant take on what was a bloody civil war. A war in which nearly 40,000 Finns lost their lives. It’s important to acknowledge that while this is a game, it’s also a simulation of real-world events that happened. GMT, and their designers, have a real respect for the history, and manage to handle things with due sensitivity. The background and events are all explained in great detail, and at no point is it made light of. All Bridges Burning models what happened, and what could have happened. There’s no laughter to be had. It’s a tactical simulation, and if anything, leaves you with a profound sense of the scale of suffering a nation went through. It’s an educational, yet still enjoyable, experience. There’s further reading available from the rulebook, and all research is fully referenced throughout.

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland 1917-1918 (2020)

Designer: V P J Arponen
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Chechu Nieto
Players: 1-3
Playing time: 180-360 mins

The post All Bridges Burning Review appeared first on Punchboard.

If you saw the words ‘GMT Games’ in the previous paragraph, and you’re expecting to read a review of a war game, think again. SpaceCorp is a game of exploration, expansion, and exploiting the precious resources found on other planets and asteroids. In fact, I guess you could call it a 3X game, instead of a 4X, as there’s not much in the way of extermination going on. You don’t need me to tell you that 4X has been done to death, but what I can tell you is that SpaceCorp does things differently to the vast majority of exploration games out there.

Economies of scale

Or more accurately, economies and scale. SpaceCorp has both in abundance. As you might have gathered from the game’s name, you’re running corporations, and in the not-too-distant future there’s big bucks to be made in space. Throughout the game you’ll be trying to turn a profit, mainly by running production on your various outposts and buildings as they’re built, but also by beating others to some shared objectives.

Currency is just currency at the end of the day though. What makes SpaceCorp so exciting is the sheer scale of the game as it progresses. The full game is split into three eras, each with its own board, with each successive era introducing new rules and variances into the game. It’s a bit like a game coming with modular expansions, that are gradually added in.

The first era sees your fledgling corporation building its foundations in the relative safety of this side of the asteroid belt. From there, your small steps turn into giant leaps, as you broaden your horizons toward the outer solar system, and the vast distances and radiation dangers that come along with it. The third, and final, era takes you interstellar, heading to nearby star systems to continue your expansion. The exponential layers of distance and scale each era introduces, make it feel like a truly epic undertaking.

It’s not rocket science

The biggest surprise when it comes to playing SpaceCorp 2025-2300AD is how easy it is to play. If your preconception of a GMT game is something akin to a physical spreadsheet on the table, you’ll be surprised with how simple, and refined, things are in space. Movement, exploration, building, and research are all driven by cards. Instead of cards filled with detailed artwork and fluff text, there are huge, colour-coded boxes, with bold text explaining the value of each. It’s a brilliant design choice, as it removes a layer of comprehension, leaving you free to concentrate on what you want to do, instead of trying to understand if you can do it. I wish more games did it this way.

The basic gameplay loop is very quick and easy. Choose an action, see if anything else gets triggered by your action, discard any played cards and refresh your hand and the display. Despite turns ticking over at warp speed, it’s a long game. In order to move around, craft your deck and player board, and build everything you’ll need to boldly go, you end up needing a lot of actions.

Every other player is trying to (largely) do the same as you, so strategy really comes to the fore. If your plans hang by a thread, due to you needing to build on a certain moon or asteroid, and someone gets there first, it’s like someone poking holes in your spacesuit. It’s a great example of indirect player interaction, perfect for the sort of person who doesn’t like the warfare of something like Twilight Imperium.

Solo play

SpaceCorp comes with a very slick solo opponent. Its turns are dictated by flipping cards, and instead of adding in a separate solo deck, as many games do, SpaceCorp does something clever. On the bottom of each of the cards of the three decks in the game (one per era) are the instructions for the bot of another era. Flip a card, consult the reference card, and do what it tells you to. It’s absolutely effortless to run, which is my biggest prerequisite in a good automa opponent.

The bot does a good job of letting you practice the game, and it’s neither too easy nor too difficult to beat, which is great. My biggest disappointment with the bot is that it doesn’t really mirror how a human would play. As an example, if you want to build somewhere, you need to move one of your cubes there. If you’re playing against a person, when they move a cube somewhere, you’ve got a reasonable idea of the sort of thing they might be up to. The bot, however, is random, so it’s next turn might be something else on the opposite side of the board.

It’s not a dealbreaker for me. I still get to play a great game on my own, and learn how to build the engines of industry that’ll propel me to intergalactic glory. Just don’t expect an opponent that feels clever.

Final thoughts

SpaceCorp 2025-2300AD is a very good space exploration game. It captures that same feeling of near-future sci-fi that Terraforming Mars does, for example, but it feels much more thematic. A large part of that is due to the way nothing dives into too much detail. There’s no over-the-top explanation of how the refineries look, or what they do – they’re just a cardboard disc you drop on the board. That’s just one example, but this abstraction allows you to focus on the bigger picture: your corporate machinations in space.

I was so surprised at the relative lightness of the game, especially with it coming from GMT. It’s not light light, it’s a solid middleweight game, but it’s a game you can teach to someone and have them compete at in the same night. I love the fact you can just stop after one or two eras if you don’t have enough time to play all three, and still have the experience of having played a full game, not just a part of one. On the flip-side of this, the way certain things carry over from one era to the next means that it doesn’t feel like three disjointed games, one after the other.

Clear iconography, great reference cards, three different boards, a ton of cards and so many different ways to approach the game. There’s a lot to like about SpaceCorp. The solo bot is a great addition, with the caveat I mentioned above, and I love the way the options available expand in-line with your own exploration. I remember feeling genuine tension at the first time I had to cross the radiation zones on the Planeteer board. For a game that looks as plain as this does at times, it draws you in like you wouldn’t believe.

If you want a sci-fi theme and a ruleset that won’t make your brain dribble out of your ears, SpaceCorp 2025-2300AD is the way to go.

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own. All photographs ©Scott Mansfield.

SpaceCorp 2025-2300AD (2018)

Designer: John Butterfield
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Chad Jensen, Kurt Miller, Douglas Shrock, Mark Simonitch
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 60-240 mins

The post SpaceCorp 2025-2300AD Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Before I get into the guts of this review, I want to give a brief disclaimer. I’m coming at this game from the point of view of a real dyed-in-the-wool Euro game fan. My sole exposure to wargames had been Root up until now. Make of that what you will.

In at the deep end

The first thing that struck me when I started reading the rulebooks, is the incredible amount of depth the game goes into. The historical research, explanations of the events through the final decades of the British Raj, and the attention to detail is amazing. It’s something you don’t really need in the sort of game I normally play. “You’re a gnome in a fantasy world where stuff happens” is enough for a game like Bonfire. It very quickly became apparent how absolutely crucial this historical accuracy (as far as possible) is in the context of the game.

Deep is good word to describe the gameplay too. Taking turns in Gandhi is mechanically a really simple process, but you better believe you’re not going to be taking your turn in a few seconds. There is so much to consider with every single turn of the event cards, to the extent that the game includes marker pawns to plan your turn with. You use them to mark potential provinces to take actions in, because you’ll run through so many scenarios in your head, it’s easy to forget what you were planning.

That level of depth, and the weight of complexity, presents a big barrier. It’s a barrier that’s probably too big to overcome for some people. It’s easily the most complex game I own, but it’s also one of the best. The difficulty isn’t the result of poorly-written rules, or questionable gameplay mechanisms. It’s complicated because there is so much going on, and so many considerations to make.

In control

Each of the four different factions in Gandhi has its own different objectives and win conditions, but all of them have a vested interest in who controls the provinces on the map. The back and forth of this control is what the entire game is built upon. Control of India is based on two main concepts: the number of units and bases present in a province, and the level of support for the various factions in those provinces. Managing both is a real balancing act, and it’s what makes Gandhi so enjoyable to play.

The central mechanism that rules the flow of the game is a turn order track on the top of each event card, and it’s genius. Players queue up to take actions, just like any other game, but the kicker is that only two of them get a chance to play each turn. If you perform actions in the current round you are unable to perform any in the next. You have to sit the round out, which leads to some agonising decisions to make.

The player at the head of the queue looks at the current event card, and the one coming up, and has to make some really difficult decisions. The first player to perform an action determines the action the second player can take, as the two are linked on a chart on the board. How beneficial is the upcoming event to me, or to my opponents? Is it worth taking a sub-par standard operation for my faction, forcing the next player’s hand? You’ll tear your hair out trying to figure out the best option, and you’ll love every second of it.

Variations on a theme

As a Euro game fan, theme isn’t always the biggest of my concerns. The way the theme and setting are integrated in Gandhi, however, is something special. The whole game is so closely tied to its historical setting, and designer Bruce Mansfield has created something remarkable. The way he’s managed to create four asymmetric factions – two of them non-violent – and balance them so well, is nothing short of witchcraft.

The non-violent (NV) factions are really important too, as they offer a way to play a genre of game that is so often dominated with opposing military forces duking it out. It shows there’s another way to do a war game, and opens avenues into these games for those who find gamifying war to be off-putting.

The operations at your disposal are so different across the factions, and the victory conditions so diverse. It makes the game feel immensely replayable, but it means you really need an understanding of each of them if you want to stand even an outside chance of winning. This is common with nearly all asymmetric games – it comes with the territory – but it’s especially true in Gandhi, such is the weight and complexity of the game.

Required reading

The first time I set Gandhi up on my table, I sat down and read the rulebook. Afterwards, I didn’t have a clue what to do. I sat there staring blankly at the board. Then, I read it again, and I still wasn’t sure. To say Gandhi is a dense game to get into, would be an understatement. I’m aware that this is probably a result of it being my first exposure to a COIN game, but it’s something to bear in mind if it’s likely to be yours too.

Initially I felt disheartened, so I watched a ‘how to play’ video, which helped, but I still felt a little lost. Then I had a proper read of the second book in the box, the Playbook, and things got a lot better. Included in that book is a full tutorial for a shorter, four faction game, and it’s the best tutorial I’ve ever used. It walks through a number of turns of a game, and explains – conversationally – what’s going on at every step, and importantly why each player is doing what they’re doing.

Once you get through that initial density, the game clicks, and then the rulebook shines. It’s indexed and cross-referenced throughout, and you’ll find you only reach for it for setup and rules references. The player aids included are excellent, and all you need to play the game.

Solo play

Gandhi features a non-player (i.e. AI, Automa) deck for each of the four factions, and the system is called Arjuna. When you’re playing with four players, these decks can stand in for the missing players, but more importantly, it also means you can play solo.

I’ve played with a lot of different solo systems, and Arjuna is one of the best I’ve used. The cards use a simple true/false flowchart system which makes them really easy to use. There’s still a lot of checking conditions as you go, but in a game designed to be played slowly, with campaigns spanning hours, this isn’t as big a deal as it might sound.

When you consider how complex Gandhi is, to be able to boil the priorities and decisions down to a small number of cards and a chart is very impressive. It’s a really good solo experience, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a solo wargame.

Final thoughts

This has been the most difficult review I’ve had to write so far. I felt a little out of my depth taking on a GMT game with a BGG weight of over 4, and as a matter of pride, I didn’t want to do a poor job of reviewing a genre of game I have so little experience of. Trying to encapsulate the feeling of playing this game and squash it down into 1,500 words is no easy job.

Gandhi is a dense, heavy game, and it’s absolutely not for everyone. However, if you like a game with depth, with difficult decisions to make, and with beautifully balanced asymmetry, then it’s a game for you. It’s a game you’ll love. Each time I’ve played has felt very different, and had plenty of twists and turns, and it feels like a game I won’t get tired of playing. Coming at it from the point of view as a Euro gamer helped, and to be honest with you, the process of playing a game like Gandhi isn’t that far removed from other area control games you might know.

The biggest surprise to me wasn’t that I enjoyed the game, but just how much I enjoyed it. Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India 1917-1947 is one of the best games I’ve ever played. It’s still early days, but I think it might be my favourite game. That’s not something I say lightly either. It took a long time for me to write that sentence and make sure I meant it. Gandhi is outstanding.

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India 1917-1947 (2019)

Designer: Bruce Mansfield
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Knut Grünitz, Charles Kibler, Rodger B. MacGowan, Mark Simonitch
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 90-240 mins

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